F-Secure's chief research officer Mikko Hypponen has warned people worried about being infected by malware not to use Firefox.
Firefox has long been regarded as a safer alternative to Internet Explorer. However, Hypponen claims those running Firefox on Windows are at greatest risk.
"A vast number of the attacks are for Windows, because the majority of the users are on Windows, that's the logic. If you're really worried just don't use Windows - there's plenty of alternatives," Hypponen told.
"Same thing applies to your web browser. You don't want to surf the web with Firefox because most of the attacks now are targeting Firefox and older versions of Internet Explorer, so don't use those."
Hypponen's comments are shored up by a recent security report from Secunia, which claimed that over the course of 2008 Firefox reported more vulnerabilities than all of the other browsers, though it addressed them quicker than its rivals.
Hyponnen also warned users off Adobe's own software for reading PDF files. "You don't want to read your PDF files with Adobe Reader because everybody is using it, get something else," he warned.
We were awaiting comment from Adobe, Mozilla and Microsoft at the time of writing.
Hypponen was speaking as part of an interview on internet security that will appear in issue 176, which goes on sale on 15 April.
