[dryicerx]

This is the trend with anything that comes out.

The Hack-ability tends to be directly proportional to it's popularity. Nothing has been ever built that was 100% secure (if you did, more power to you). My point is, the the more popular something gets, more minds will be focused on it to break it, and more information be available publicly regarding possible attack vectors, and eventually it will break.

Chrome is a new player, people haven't had much time to play with it, or the motivation to since it doesn't have as much market share at the moment.

[briansmith]

I think Chrome and IE are both on track to become proved-secure. I think they are both close to being able to use automatic tools to prove that malware cannot get out of the sandbox without an operating-system exploit.

Microsoft seems to be working on a provably-secure micro-kernel for Windows. In a few years they will be able to legitamately claim that privilege escalation is literally impossible without the user's consent. That is such a big and expensive task that I'm not sure their mainstream competitors will be able to match that claim in any reasonable time frame (except maybe Symbian, because it already has a micro-kernel architecture).

After that, security on Windows will be all about UI. How can we prevent programs from tricking the user into letting them do something bad. How can we prevent programs from doing bad things without the user knowing? How can the user be sure that a program will not violate his privacy? How can the user be sure that a program won't cause data loss?

[stcredzero]

How can the user be sure that a program won't cause data loss?

An easy way to do it: never delete anything. This isn't too different than my OS X setup at home with Time Machine. I have exceptions set up for things like my VirtualBox images and movies. A more advanced system that can keep deltas of binary data would be even better. A solution designed for the clueless end-user would have some sort of function that would automatically keep less frequent backups for larger files.

Run out of room? The salesperson talks you into a hard-drive upgrade. HP, Dell, and Apple would be happy about this!

More accurately, never completely delete anything. The system would always keep around at least one version of everything. Yes, this would mean that secure delete is impossible, but this sort of system is for the casual home user. If you need secure delete, use a different system. If you are doing esoteric things with lots of large files, use a different system.

[briansmith]

That is very similar to what Windows Vista does with "Previous Versions", except "Previous Versions" automatically gets rid of old versions when disk space gets low.

[mikeryan]

Also don't forget features, as software becomes more feature rich it also increases in available holes.