Firefox to US$7,500 cash reward) to researchers who discover severe security holes in Firefox. Official guidelines for handling security vulnerabilities discourage early disclosure of vulnerabilities so as not to give potential attackers an advantage in creating exploits. Because Firefox generally has fewer publicly known security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer (see "Comparison of web browsers"), improved security is often cited as a reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. "The Washington Post" reported that exploit code for known critical security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer was available for 284 days in 2006. In comparison, exploit code for known, critical security vulnerabilities in
Firefox for Android browser components become outdated, increasingly insecure, and unable to properly render modern websites. As a workaround, a Google engineer suggested using the separately-installable and updateable Google Chrome or Firefox browsers. In case of Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.x), Google stopped supporting that branch of Android with updates to its Chrome browser after Chrome 43, and move up to Android 4.1 as the oldest release supported by Google Chrome. The open-source nature of Firefox has made it possible to maintain its development for operating system versions that are past their product support lifecycle, and has resulted in Firefox having stronger security and