Internet Explorer 8's Malware-Blocking Madness

Since its launch, Internet Explorer 8 has blocked access to over 560 million sites that it determined were serving malware, or about 3 million blocks per day, said Brandon LeBlanc in a blog post on Friday. However, it is unclear how many of those sites were legitimate, duped into serving malware laced ads, sent to them from their ad network.

For the record, Firefox and Google will block sites they deem to be serving malicious code, too. But IE8 has been found to be best at it, according to a study by NSS Labs commissioned by Microsoft. NSS Labs found that IE8 caught 69% of the malware sites it tested, versus the runner up, Firefox 3.07, which caught 30%. Safari caught 24%, Chrome 16%, Opera 9.64 5% and IE7 4%.