Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Latest IE Hole Lets Gopher Root You

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the well-isn't-that-special dept.

rvaniwaa writes "Another hole in internet explorer has been discovered. This hole allows a hacker to root a user's computer whenever the user clicks on a gopher link. All versions of IE are affected and a Microsoft spokesman stated that the company is "moving forward on the investigation with all due speed""

1 of 533 comments (clear)

  1. Active gopher sites. by AJWM · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The last time I actually used a gopher site was about a year ago, some wire service was running it for its news stories.

    However, a quicky search turns up several still-active gophers, for example:
    gopher://gopher.umsl.edu/
    gopher://gopher.cac.psu.edu/
    (These actually return data -- some others I found the server up but no data returned).

    As to why gopher died out, Tim Berners-Lee offers the following:

    "It was just about this time, spring 1993, that the University of Minnesota decided that it would ask for a license fee from certain classes of users who wanted to use gopher. Since the gopher software being picked up so widely, the university was going to charge an annual fee. The browser, and the act of browsing, would be free, and the server software would remain free to nonprofit and educational institutions. But any other users, notably companies, would have to pay to use gopher server software.

    "This was an act of treason in the academic community and the Internet community. Even if the university never charged anyone a dime, the fact that the school had announced it was reserving the right to charge people for the use of the gopher protocols meant it had crossed the line. To use the technology was too risky. Industry dropped gopher like a hot potato."

    (from his book, Weaving the Web)

    --
    -- Alastair