Internet Explorer Alert

Thrill

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7784908.stm

Users of the world's most common web browser have been advised to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people's computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.

Microsoft is investigating the problem and preparing an emergency software patch to resolve it, it says.

Aquos76

its on rte's site now aswell

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1216/microsoft.html

leninbenjamin

pfft... if you use IE you deserve everything you get. people who use it should be exterminated...


:pac:

Yakuza

leninbenjamin wrote: »

pfft... if you use IE you deserve everything you get. people who use it should be exterminated...


:pac:

Thank you for that well-balanced and reasoned comment. I see a big future for you on a debating team.

From a buisness point of view none of the workarounds listed by microsoft are very satisfactory.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/961051.mspx

The best of a bad lot is disabling the XML island control with the side effect of breaking Outlook web access.

I'm hoping the hotfix out today will do the job along with our restrictive proxy and upto date virus-scan.

What does everyone else in the IT end of things plan on doing?

LoLth

leninbenjamin wrote: »

pfft... if you use IE you deserve everything you get. people who use it should be exterminated...


:pac:

well, the last two paragraphs in this article on the register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/17/mozilla_3_0_5_and_2_0_0_1_9_updates/

would seem to indicate that firefox and opera suffered the same vulnerability... does this mean that rampant FF and anti MS fanboi-ism caused all the focus to be on IE while the rest "got away with it" ? Surely that in itself is a security issue, "use firefox and you are safe" all the while you are just as vulnerable.

I actually hope, while you smugly browsed the internet on firefox you got yourself infected with something. idiotic statements like yours deserve a bit of karmic balancing

Well then I should be exterminated.

Firefox and Linux are promoted by so many as if they're the next coming of Jesus (and I'm not the only one who thinks so). I'm not one to give in to fanboyism and as a result I don't use either. If I were to switch I'd probably use Opera but IE works for me so I've kept it. I only ever got one spyware infection and it was my own fault.

Capt'n Midnight

PATCH AVAILABLE http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-078.mspx

The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer

kaizersoze

Got that patch through automatic update this morning.