Controversy Surrounds Huge IE Hole

Suchetha wrote in with a Wired News bit talking about security hole in IE that allows malicious web pages to reformat a hard drive. The Wired talks more about bugtrack's handling of the whole thing, and how it essentially posted working code for the exploit. Was it irresponsible or not?

Comments

I am NOT surprised.

[Noryungi]

I know some people will probably moderate me down for this, but I don't care.

Like the title says: I am not surprised. Microsoft probably has the poorest security track record of any software publisher out there.

Maybe Bugtraq has not been very serious in its handling of this security hole, but, honestly using Microsoft operating systems or applications without a ton of additionnal security software (antivirus, firewalls, etc) is asking for trouble.

In my opinion, Bugtraq is not responsible: Microsoft is. If you use Microsoft products, do as I do: do not use IE (I use Opera or Mozilla), do not allow any application to have access to the Internet without authorization (I use Zone Alarm), do not use Outlook for email (I use Pegasus Mail) and install and update an antivirus program religiously (I actually use two).

Two, out of my 4 personal machines at my home, use either Linux or OpenBSD. One is a Windows 98 machine. The last is being rebuilt and will become a NetBSD workstation. And there is a reason for it: Microsoft security (or rather lack of).

Now, flame all you want. =)