Browser share numbers show Chrome way up

And Internet Explorer is slowly falling below 50%.

Fascinating how the worm… er, the market has turned this year.

InfoWorld Tech Watch.

Internet Explorer loses market share rapidly

This is an unusual week – I have two stories in Windows Secrets newsletter, both of which cover important ground for Windows users.

This one talks about the fall in use of IE. Interesting to see what’s in its place.

This is paid content – but remember that you can subscribe to Windows Secrets Newsletter for whatever subscription fee you want to set. You pay what you think it’s worth to you.

Pwn2Own conclusion

The annual pwn2own (I pronounce it “pone to own”) contest just wrapped, with interesting results. DVLabs reports:

The contest uncovered 4 new and unique critical vulnerabilities affecting the latest and greatest versions of IE, Safari and FireFox. The Chrome browser gets a small nod for being impacted by one of the flaws, although exploit is not possible using any current known techniques.

You’ve probably seen the headlines about Internet Explorer 8 – the version that just came out – getting hacked, and how Microsoft swears it has a patch, less than 12 hours after the original “pwn” but just hasn’t delivered it yet.

Interestingly, none of the mobile operating systems – Blackberry, Android, iPhone, Nokia/Symbian, or Windows Mobile – got hacked. I betcha bucks to buckaroos that’ll change next year.

Firefox on Windows hardest target to crack

Ryan Naraine just posted a fascinating interview with Charlie Miller, the guy who broke into a fully patched MacBook at the annual Pwn2Own competition at the CanSecWest security conference.

Charlie confirms what you’ve known all along:

It’s really hard to exploit Firefox on Windows… For all the browsers on operating systems, the hardest target is Firefox on Windows.

Read what he says about Chrome. I, for one, was very impressed.

Thanks to reader GE for the heads-up…