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Controversy Surrounds Huge IE Hole

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the no-surprise-here dept.

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?

4 of 740 comments (clear)

  1. Yes it's irresponsible... by RocketScientist · · Score: 1, Troll

    but...(you knew the "but" was coming, right?)

    Is it really any more irresponsible than running IE in the first place? How many more of these browser exploits have to happen? A part of me almost hopes someone does exploit this and do nasty things with it JUST SO PEOPLE WON'T BE DEPENDANT ON IE ANYMORE. Friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer.

    I think the word needs to be spread: Anyone who uses IE isn't an innocent bystander, but someone who knowingly uses a defective and dangerous product. IE Users are no better than people who own Ford Explorers and kept the old Firestones because they don't want to go through the trouble to get them changed.

    So, all you other geeks out there, when you're visiting family over the upcoming holidays and they inevitably ask you to fix something on their computer, install Mozilla (or Opera, or even Netscape) and set it as the default browser. When they ask why, tell them it's because IE is a dangerous and defective product.

  2. Re:Irresponsible? by Spiked_Three · · Score: 0, Troll

    I completely agree.
    One of the whole issues of OSS v. Microsoft I don't understand is why people think paid programmers are more prone to make errors than unpaid programmers? At least for paid programmers, someone's butt is going get chewed and they might even lose their job. You can bet some paid programmers have been given a deadline to get this problem fixed. In the OSS cumminity you really don't know what the accountability chain is.
    Witness the recent hacking into servers and insertion of trojan source code in OSS. If instructions for this procedure was published, how would the OSS community feel about that? How many audits have been done on all other OSS code now that this has been discovered? How many more trojans will we find?
    Yes, the handling of this was irresponsible, for commericial or OSS software. It shows malicious intent from a biased group of people to harm Microsoft. Their credibility is zero to any subjective witeness.
    Spiked.

    --
    slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
  3. Because Mozilla & pals are perfect? by EnglishTim · · Score: 1, Troll

    Since when have Mozilla and pals been perfect?

    All these people ranting about "It's your own fault - using sofware you know is defective..." - I'm sorry, but I don't know of any software that I know to have no defects.

    At least IE gets regular fixes through auto-update. Mozilla et al don't tend to do that and also don't tend to *work* as well as IE for most browsing needs. It it's a choice between two bits of software, neither of which I know to be secure, I might as well choose the one which does most other things better.

  4. As usual... by di0s · · Score: 2, Troll

    The fix is located here and here. I've already "patched"...