According to a recent interview with hacker, Charles Miller, he stated that the Safari is easier to exploit rather than Firefox or IE because it runs on Mac OS.
During the Pwn2Own 2009 hacking competition, Charlie was able to take control of a fully patched Macbook in mere seconds by exploiting a security vulnerability on the Safari browser. He claimed the $10,000 top prize for it as well as the Macbook.
Hacking into Macs is so much easier. You don’t have to jump through hoops and deal with all the anti-exploit mitigations you’d find in Windows.
He also talked about the value of OS and browser’s vulnerabilities and said that exploits for IE8 and Firefox on Windows yields more money if you sell those to their respective companies compared to what you can get from selling Safari on Mac vulnerabilities.
So what about Chrome? It is Chrome’s sandbox that’s making it hard for hackers to make their exploits to work and he said that other browsers should go into that direction for better security.
Check out the whole interview from ZDNet. It’s quite interesting.