Anybody who uses the internet has to use a browser to surf the web. While some browsers are better than others, it seems that almost all of them have internet security issues. Internet Explorer’s security issues are well known. Even Mozilla’s popular Firefox browser has just launched a new version as the earlier one had many holes in internet security.

Unfortunately switching browsers may be more trouble than it is worth because all security vulnerabilities may not even be known to all users. Firefox – and other browsers – release security patches from time to time in an attempt to counter this problem.

Google has launched a software, Skipfish, which scans all web applications for flaws which can compromise security. This web security scanner can used to make a sitemap annotated with interactive crawl results, highlighting flaws, after a recursive crawl and dictionary-based probing of the target site.

It is similar to Nikto and Nessus which are used for the same purpose, but is supposed to deliver a better performance. Google developer Michal Zalewski warned that this application does not satisfy all the requirements of the Wasc Web Application Security Scanner Evaluation Criteria. Nor does it have an extensive database of all security vulnerabilties which would have been of greater help.

Google has asked people to use the application responsibly and only for sites where they have permission to do so. However, with security problems rampant on the internet it remains to be seen what people actually do as there are no safeguards against any misuse.

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