Forum Moderators: open
Vulnerabilities in IE have become so common that some security researchers are recommending that people adopt alternate browsers. The U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team, the official U.S. body responsible for defending against online threats, also advised security administrators to consider moving to a non-Microsoft browser among six possible responses.
[news.com.com...]
It's a tough moment for MS - Looks like Bill Gates' call for making security their #1 agenda item last year was a bit prescient, but it still came a bit late to actually meet this challenge.
I differ, however, in that I believe the helpdesk would be hammered with accolades now that sites work the way they were supposed to all along once a conforming browser is introduced :)
Borrowing a term from agriculture and the fight against pests, software developers and security experts have warned about the hazards of "monoculture." The term refers to the widespread farming of a single variety, making the entire crop vulnerable to a single pest. Historians pin such disasters as the Irish potato famine on monoculture.Mozilla acknowledged that much of the value of using its software, or that of Opera, stemmed from the hazards of monoculture rather than any inherent security superiority.
[news.com.com...]
So, I guess using alternate browsers makes them less safe. So the only way to keep Mozilla, et al, safe from attacks, is, umm, not to use Mozilla.
Maybe I'll use lynx. Or just do this:
telnet www.webmasterworld.com 80
GET /
That's safe right? Its a dangerous world out there, maybe i'll just turn off my javascript and stay home.
Namely, that it doesn't support ActiveX, which is the source of this (and many other) security issues. Also, not being as tightly tied to the OS creates an inherant barrier against certain types of attack.
My bias is against IE, and for OpenSource. Partly for real reasons, partly for typical OpeneSource "Religious Holy War" reasons.
Then again, both sides of the debate tend towards "Religious Holy War" arguments (ones based on gut feeling and emotions, rather than pure facts). That aspect of browser and OS wars is unlikely to go away in the near future. Legitimate reasons for picking one over the other just add fuel to the "Fundamentalist" arguments of either side.
Edit, add postscript: Yah, I'm in a mellow, rational mood today. Don't worry, it'll pass.
He's resistant. Which is weird. Because linux is what he cut his teeth on. So off-breeds (off-MS, that is) ought to give him warm-and-fuzzies.
I think it's because he doesn't want to have to explain to 100 people why they can't use IE any more....
And I'm not going to be there to do it for him.
But I just know that I'll keep IE 5.5 somewhere ..since my wife asked me to give up skydiving ..what other "legal" way is there to live as dangerously and get that adrenalin rush as "surfing with Bill "....;)
I think it's because he doesn't want to have to explain to 100 people why they can't use IE any more....
Which is interesting because the oft cited reason for why people use Internet Explorer is that "people just use whatever is installed." (I'm not claiming that you've said that vkaryl, only that it's often said.)
If that's the case, then institutional changes from IE to another browser should be mostly headache free.
IE is practically integrated into the Windows operating system as far as the users are concerned. It is a serious security flaw in Windows, not just the IE.
On balance, I think people are too used to the convenience to care about security.
I think changing browser for an institution might have some issues with email client integration. It's not just a quick download, install and off you go.
problem is the uninstall of moz is not nearly as clean as you think ..all the user folders of mail etc are left and you have to search the disk and get rid of them one by one ...that is some serious geek work ..not for the fainthearted who in a moment of inattention might "delete" the wrong file and break the machine ...and thats just in pre XP ...in Xp itself you got to sneak round the goddamned gui that doesnt want to let you delete anything without a signed note from Bill ....
How much would you charge to do this clean and correct on 10 machines ...now scale up for whatever the number is and we are into serious money here ..and down time per machine ...first person to write a macro to do this ( if one could ) is rich ( and I want only 10% for my share for having explained the basics ...I'll be selling the ebook with the step by step , file by file manual delete list ) ...
Or T'bird is needed with auto click and play import from outlook etc ...
c'mon get coding guys ...
and someone here said that t'bird is still buggy as hell?
when all is said and done M$ sloppyness could revitalise the internet and provide work for millions more and Bill can tell us this was all a planned "feature" ...
s'cuse spelling (comme d'ab)
Sheesh. Considering the number of calls I get every day ("help what's this in my inbox!?") because it's 6:30 am and Eric doesn't get in until 8 or so, doing something constructive about an mail client seems like a a no-brainer too.... They don't pay me to be an IT tech, but I'm the SINGLE PERSON (besides Eric the IT guy) out of 100 who has ANY clue....
[Not to worry, whoisgregg - I wasn't the first one who said it, though I'll bet I have since! *laughing*]
[Edits: MEGA-typos! *sigh* Long day, what can I say?]
[edited by: eelixduppy at 9:56 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2009]
You can say that again ..when I finally realised that firefox as default doesnt get opened as "the browser" from inside outlook ( which stubbornly launches IE ) ..I thought use t'bird ..
But it has no import accounts/settings facilty from Outlook ...manually to do this from outlook "no way joseph"..
So you have no alternative but to take the moz package with its email reader which does import as an option from outlook all the accounts/settings ...
From there you can then .(.if you really want t'bird ) import again all of the stuff you just put into moz into t' bird ( because it can import from moz but only moz ) ..and then uninstall moz ...
If you're using NS7.x, Moz (don't know about FF, but presume as it's also a Moz engine, same rules will probably work), then my bet is you'll have to do a hack in about:config or all/pref.js file to call a non M$ app to load.
<trim>
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 11:56 am (utc) on July 2, 2004]
[edit reason] no blog urls please. [/edit]
The recommendation is making its way into the mainstream media. An article in The Globe And Mail [globetechnology.com], one of the two largest national newspapers in Canada, has picked up the story.
Now, we could all sit around and pick apart the mass of innacuracies in the story (reporters really don't get Tech), or we could just take it for what it really represents...
The visibility of the security security flaws in IE has gotten to the point where it's really hitting the papers, and that might make the change that M$ fears... If enough people read about it, think about it, and discuss it, eventually people other than Tech Heads are gonna start making the switch to other browsers.
"Mozilla and Firefox downloads have increased steadily since last fall, with the Firefox user base doubling every few months, as more people seem to have reached their threshold level of frustration dealing with problems with IE and Windows, and have found the Mozilla software a good solution to solving those problems," said Hofmann. "CERT's recommendation is just a reflection of the trend we have seen for quite some time." Security experts said Mozilla's lack of ActiveX support makes the browser more secure than IE. ActiveX was intended to allow websites to add multimedia and interactive features, but has lately been used to slide spyware onto PCs without the user's knowledge or explicit consent.
usa today yahoo [news.yahoo.com],
Security experts say the two new attacks likely have been in operation for weeks, infecting tens of thousands of PCs. Given the history of cyberthreats, they are bracing for copycat assaults.
Still no sign of a patch for the latest threats. Did everyone in Redmond take summer holidays at the same time?
Henry
when if you've got a hardrive bigger than 4 gigs then only your grandchildren are likely to see the "disc fragmentation is finished" notice
I am the co founder of a tech site (I figured today that we got a PR7)
for about 18 months we have supported a great fix to boost defrag in 98
just rename your defrag "old" in case of broplems
and load instaed win2K defrag
if you do a few searches you will find it
I cannot go further for MS lawyers very politely
ask us to stop supporting that trick
Even Slate [slate.msn.com] (Microsoft's online magazine) says that maybe, just maaaaaybe FireFox is better. :D
Perhaps the IE "monopoly" is finally crumbling? :)
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/7952.htm [webmasterworld.com]
Printed it and will be making the picture frames to display it on the office wall later today ...
Maybe now they could start talking objectively about their OS...?
Browser patch:
[webmasterworld.com...]well, it's something ;)
And, just as quickly... browser unpatch:
[webmasterworld.com...]
