People always say that Linux is more secure than Windows. The main reason seems to be the general system design philosophy and the fact that users are users and not root.
One main security concern when using Windows and Internet Explorer seem to be ActiveX. Every few days I read about another kind of exploit using ActiveX, and almost always the workaround is to deactivate ActiveX. I read that so often I wonder why people bother to activate ActiveX at all. (One reason might be that the name contains "active"; another might be the windows update function.)
Using Ubuntu and Firefox, I always feel so safe when reading about the ActiveX exploits. I know that there are many other security vulnerabilities that use JavaScript and/or Adobe Flash, but as far as I understand those kind of security vulnerabilities can only do as much damage as my user rights allow. Of course that doesn't help much when the malware wants to destroy all of my data - but most malware today only wants to use my PC as a botnet drone and so is not interested in destroying my data.
So the question again: does Firefox running under Ubuntu have something similar to ActiveX, in terms of security vulnerabilities?
Another question which may be identical: can a security vulnerability involving Adobe Flash and/or JavaScript be "easily" exploited to do as much damage as an ActiveX exploit?
When I say "easy" I mean that the attack does not need to exploit another component of the system to elevate user rights. For example, an exploit involving Adobe Flash will gain access to my PC using my user rights, and then proceed to exploit some known vulnerability in X
to gain root access. That is not "easy".