Warning: Stop using the Internet Explorer (for now)!
By Sherzod on Dec 16, 2008 with Comments 1
bismimg
Assalamu alaykum .
It has been discovered (not surprisingly) that a serious security flaw has been found in Internet Explorer (all versions).
I found this article in guardian.co.uk and thought to share it with you (This is an extract. The full article can found here):
Microsoft Internet Explorer users told to switch browsers over flaw
Users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer have been warned of a flaw that could let hackers gain access to their computers and steal personal data, and told them to swap to a rival browser.
The flaw was spotted last week when hackers started attacking users of IE 7. The flaw, however, has also been found in earlier versions of Microsoft’s browser, IE 5 and IE 6.
Microsoft is trying to put together a patch, but in the meantime computer users have been advised to update their security settings or switch to unaffected browsers such as Firefox or Opera.
The flaw in IE allows criminals to gain control of computers that have visited a website infected with malicious code designed to exploit it. While restricting web surfing to trusted sites should reduce the risk of infection, the malicious code can be injected into any website. Users do not have to click or download anything to become infected, merely visiting an infected website is sufficient.
Antivirus software specialists Trend Micro believe as many as 10,000 sites have been hacked to exploit the flaw.
What should Internet Explorer users do?
- Change the program’s internet zone security setting to “high”. This should protect against all known exploits of this vulnerability by disabling scripting and disabling less secure features in IE. It is, however, likely to slow down a user’s web experience.
- Log out of your computer and create a new user account which has limited rights to change the PC’s settings. Log in as that user. This should reduce the chances of anyone being able to exploit the flaw should your computer become infected.
- Keep antivirus software up to date. This is likely to have only limited effect as most antivirus software packages only investigate files that are downloaded from the internet, rather than looking at every page visited.
- Switch to another browser, preferably Firefox. This is by far the best option.
Source: guardian.co.uk
Author: Richard Wray
Our advice is to move from IE to Firefox Chrome or Opera and return to IE once Microsoft has released its patch. Microsoft’s next IE update was scheduled for Jan 2009 but we believe this crisis will force Microsoft to release a patch within a week..
We recommend everyone to switch to Firefox, it is the best after all!
wasalaamimg
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Filed Under: News
Although i would agree that IE has its problems and is actually not as good as other browsers, Firefox (the only real alternative) still has major issues of its own to deal with.
Firefox has come top of a list of the most vulnerable application on the net
http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/12/16/firefox-tops-list-of-most-vulnerable-windows-applications
Whilst we all collectively boo IE for its failure (justified) we should be aware that most,if not all, other browsers suffer from similar problems.
Its just nice to give the big bully a bloody nose once in a while though isn’t it?
ta