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Dept. of Homeland Security Says to Stop Using IE
LWATCDR writes "I have been saying this for a long time but now it is offical. From Yahoo News:
'The Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team touched off a storm this week when it recommended for security reasons using browsers other than Microsoft's Internet Explorer.'" In related news, rocketjam writes "According to Wired, the widespread Internet Explorer security exploit last week and CERT's subsequent recommendation that IE users should consider switching to another browser has resulted in a large spike in downloads of the Mozilla Organization's Mozilla and Firefox web browsers."
That was CERT's announcement, this is actually the Department of Homeland Security making this recoomendation. 2 different orginizations, same recommendation.
Repeat after me: Global Class Action Lawsuit against Microsoft. Bunch of bumbling fubars. And that ain't the only whole they haven't plugged in months...
Same here in the Army. But you are expecting a LOT if you think that the military will change the web browser overnight.
First a committee/team has to be put together to verify the recommendation not to use IE. Then an alternative will have to be selected. This means another committee/team will have to determine what the alternatives are. Once the alternative web browsers are identified, they will have to be tested to make sure that they are secure and compatible they are. This testing can very depending on how indepth they go and how soon they realize that a large number of military web sites are IE only!! Once a replacement browser is selected, a Plan of Action has to be determined to figure out how the new web browser will be installed and how the completed installation is reported back up the chain of command. Once all of this has been completed, it will then be briefed to the head shed at the Pentagon who will then make some modifications before giving an order that all computers have a new web browser installed.
This doesn't take into account any turf battles that may come up during this process, fixing all of the IE only military web sites, complaints and stubborn refusal from users (IE will have to be completely removed otherwise people will still use it), all of the modifications to the Plan of Action as it goes down the chain of command, the several weeks it will take for each DOIM and unit to figure out how they are going to implement the Plan of Action, DoD civilians.....
It should take the military a few months to install a new web browser.....
Army of One!
http://johnkerry.com was running Apache on Linux when last queried at 26-Jun-2004 10:33:54 GMT
http://georgewbush.com was running Microsoft-IIS on Windows 2000 when last queried at 25-Jun-2004 13:05:27 GMT
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Uh, it is reported that the trojan only automatically installs itself with IE. For other browsers, you have to download and run a GIF image that is disgused as an EXE with the infamouse double-extension social engineering trick.
Did you read the page you linked to?