A warning for Internet users: this is a serious enough security flaw that the Department of Homeland Security is warning you to not use Internet Explorer until a fix is found. The problem could put your personal information at risk, and give hackers access to private things like your email accounts. With so many computer bugs out there, Internet users rely heavily on anti-virus software and patches to keep up with each new virus. This time, that’s not good enough.From Forbes: (April 28, 2014)
A few days ago a new zero day exploit for Internet Explorer made the headlines (for the uninitiated a zero day is a new exploit that is made public before the security or technology community have patched against it). In another blow for Internet security and trust after the recent Heartbleed issues this exploit allows cyber criminals to deploy malicious code to your computer silently, without your permission as you visit any given web page with the nasty code on it.
This exploit is particularly nasty as it impacts 6 different versions of Internet Explorer ranging from 6 to 11 (you can see more details on the impact here if you are interested) and allows fairly reliable distribution of malicious code that could do anything from stealing your data to turning on your webcam. This exploit is perfect for a drive by download where you visit a web page and the nasty code silently loads.(from an unattributed source ...)
A newly discovered security hole in Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer—the default Web browser for many users—could be particularly troubling for those still running Windows XP.
Personally, I'm only running XP on my laptop ... and that's due to be updated this summer. And I don't use Internet Explorer any more. I was a big fan of Mozilla (FireFox) but that has so much 'overhead' that it uses 80% of available (2GB) memory just to start up. So I've been using Google Chrome lately, and it's much more economical of resources.
Not to mention that it seems to have fewer "holes".
Most of us already know that Explorer has historically been one of the most vulnerable software applications in the world. It's virtue is that you can run ANYTHING on it; the problem is that the same structure which makes it "universally" applicable also seems to allow Junior High School students to hack it.
Just saying; full disclosure - I'm not a software engineer so don't take my word for anything I say about computers.
1 comment:
I cannot. IE is my lifeline to the great information superhighway.
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