the intranet and trusted sites zones are still ample targets for attacks, so unless xp sp2 does more to sandbox ie than adjusting local zone security settings, we're back to square one.

(in)security zones are why these vulns are possible in ie and not mozilla, opera, etc.. though mozilla, opera, safari have their own largely unexplored vulnerabilities (chrome, skin installation, uri handling, etc.). the potential is there, as browsers are expected to provide more ludicrous features, they will also have more vulns and the vulns will become more serious and less difficult to exploit.

in fact, there is no end in sight to the vulns since there was no security architecture in the first place to sandbox the browser from external components and the host os... and in fact, this is completely undesirable to both browser users and developers since the expectation is that the web browser will become the common user interface for most services and applications whether they are local or remote. fixing silly implementation bugs at this point, after the architecture has failed, is like security through nickle and diming it. ie exemplifies this but the other browsers will experience this as well. even at this point, the few security specs that exist for browsers (same origin policy etc.) are difficult to implement and as public record shows, impossible to fortify. a higher level sandbox would also be difficult to implement but if it were sound than the lower level security bugs would be far less significant.

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Link to this comment: http://www.securityfocus.com/comments/columns/251/27179#27179