A new report from NSSLabs — an independent information security research and testing organization — shows that Internet Explorer offers the best protection against socially engineered malware attacks.

The results are shocking, because Internet Explorer 9 was able to block or warn against 99% of the attacks, Internet Explorer 8 was able to block or warn against 90% of those attacks.

“With a unique URL blocking score of 94% and over-time protection rating of 99%, Internet Explorer 9 was by far the best at protecting users against socially-engineered malware,” said NSS Labs.

One would think the competition wouldn’t be far behind, but that person would be dead wrong.

Firefox 3.6 was only able to block 19% of the attacks. Safari 5 could only manage to block 11%, Google Chrome 6 only 3% with Opera 10 in last place being able to block none.

Does this mean anything?

While this research shows that Internet Explorer is the best at blocking or warning against socially engineered malware attacks — by far — one could argue that while other browsers are horrible at detecting such attacks, it doesn’t matter.

What I mean is that most people who use Firefox, Google Chrome and/or Opera tend to know better when it comes to randomly clicking on links, downloading possibly infected files from shady websites and so on. People who can see a scam for what it really is is much better off than the “regular” user.

However, that does seem to be changing, as less and less people are using Internet Explorer with more “regular” people downloading other browsers, meaning these results could also mean devastation as Internet Explorer continues to fall from its once dominant position.

It’s been about six months since the Chromium Security Reward program was launched, and Google has increased the maximum reward from $1,337 to $3,133.70. Google says the maximum amount is most likely to be rewarded to SecSeverity-Critical reports. The base reward for less severe issues remains at $500, however, the amount could increase if the report is high quality (careful test cases, accurate analysis of the root cause and productive discussion in helping to fix the issue).

It is more than likely this is in response to Mozilla increasing their reward from $500 to $3,000. However, Google claims the reward was increased since finding such a severe security flaw would be much harder due to Google Chrome’s sandbox.

Looks like Google is trying hard to be 1337 in their reward amount, though someone made a remark in the comments, saying “The 1337 schtick jumped the shark in 2000.”