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Microsoft to Issue Out-of-Cycle Patch for IE
rsw writes "Microsoft will be breaking their normal patch cycle and issuing a patch for the Download.Ject attack (a.k.a. Scob). They claim that the forthcoming patch will be a "long-term solution to the core vulnerability" exploited by Scob." Note that this does not mean that they are replacing IE with FireFox.
The released a patch when it's needed, not when it's scheduled. How novel.
Awww damn, and here I thought that Microsoft would include one of its strongest competing products instead of it's own that millions of dollars were funneled in to. Maybe I'm just too naive...
If you have to ask, you'll never know.
Of course they do. IE is by far the most used browser in the world. It is, after all, included with the most used OS's in the world. Those who know their stuff don't use a lot of Microsoft products, but a lot of people aren't in the know.
I am throwing Karma out the window on this one as my comments on this subject fall on deaf ears here but... Firefox is not an acceptable replacement for IE for 90% of the users out there so I really think we could have done without the snide comment.
Yesterday I mentioned that nearly everyone who visits my site with Firefox are coming in from Slashdot URLs. It may come as a surprise to you but more than 90% of the Internet users out there aren't aware or concerned with IE vulnerabilities. It may also come as a surprise to you but Firefox isn't exactly the best browser out there if you want 100% compatibility with the "broken" sites on the Internet. These same users that don't know of the issues w/IE are more concerned that they cannot reach their online banking, see their sites the way that the "broken" authors intended, and have a seamless browsing experience.
Firefox is not the answer to MS' issues. Better preparation for security is.
I only use firefox. What render problems? I haven't been able to get IE to run on slackware anyway.
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
Many users are not aware that there are good alternatives to IE. What firefox needs is publicity. Sure we all know about firefox but many home users havent heard about it yet.
"Our [Microsoft IE] users should have confidence that as long as they're running the latest browser with all the latest security fixes, they will have the most powerful and secure browsing experience," Hachamovitch said.
Umm, yeah, we should (in a perfect world) be able to have confidence that the biggest software company on the planet puts out the best product. But Microsoft is too big and juicy a target to inspire confidence.
We also should be able to trust our elected leaders to be able to spend our tax funds wisely, but I'm not holding my breath on that either.
So, are their patches normally NOT long-term solutions to vulnerabilities then?
i open IE about once a day to look at pages that don't load in firefox
I've walked into work before with the owners complaining of not being able to get to half the web sites they like to peruse and hit slashdot to see what's up. Half the time I'm back in 20 seconds with an satisfactory explanation about a recent or in-progress attack.
Of course, I have to (for the umpteenth time) explain to my boss/CEO that I can't fix other peoples' servers, only ours. Wish I could at least get that guy to remember how a sort works in Excel.
The only thing more dangerous than a file named -rf is renaming it -rf\ /
One of the biggest complaints against MS is that they are slow to respond to user need, while quick to add profit-margin-stretching-even-though-the-user-does n't-want/need-anyway "features" (e.g. Clippy). So how is the /. community going to react when MS actually starts listening to the customer and adding true features like security, speed, efficiency?
/. geeks, just think about how much more time/effort will go into linux to make it even better. And, as for jumping ship, we'll have no need. But we may have a fleet comprised of MS, *nix/*BSD, etc.
I've noticed over the past couple of months that there have been a few of opinions coming out. One is that it's too late for MS. They screwed the pooch years ago and their entire user base will end up jumping ship.
Another is that this is nothing but a marketing ploy. MS isn't really changing their ideology, they're just making us think they are, so we're better off jumping ship.
The other (my personal opinion) is that it's a welcome change. I will be glad when Windows becomes an environment that is as stable and easily configurable as linux. I love competition. It's what makes America thrive, and if MS can become competitive (again) in the eyes of
Kudos to MS for trying to fix their old mistakes, and hopefully in a couple of years, they'll have them fixed and we can really have an OS War!
for maximum effect, the preceding post should be read monotone and at a steady cadence
anybody who writes i.e only sites should be fired on the spot.
they have no business in the IT industry. I don't care if ie was the defacto standard - you write to industry standard - especially web pages.
firefox is great!! it is fast and renders pages the way they are suppose to - it is ie and the web sites that are broken and need to get fixed.
"The problem I found is that a lot of web apps are coded for IE's "extensions" that don't translate over to Firefox... my power company paid some contractor to put together an online bill pay system for them, and obviously they're not interested in fixing it."
Complain! Even with major companies it can be that easy. Verizon Wireless's pages were IE-only for a while - I (along with many others, I'm sure) complained about it and threatened to take my business elsewhere; and they fixed it.
#DeleteChrome
It's hard to keep up with what MS patch fixes which exploit, but I thought a patch for this was issued a few days after the exploit was discovererd. Am I confusing this with that that recent firefox run-shell bug?
All these bugs are difficult to keep track of. It was so much simpler before the net. Virus scanner updates came once a month, windows updates came once a quarter or longer, and most of them were fixes for feature or performance bugs, not security updates. Now we have daily virus updates and each week half a dozen OS updates for serious exploits.
Man I am starting to sound like an old fart.
I work for a very large corporation, with employees ranging at least in the hundreds of thousands, if not more. When corporate IT puts the newest releases of IE on every single desktop, and states that we *will* use it as the one browser, we use IE. A few holdouts still use Netscape 4.7, as they work on contracts requiring it for some reason.
As an internal web developer, I try to make sure my apps. are cross-browser compliant, but I am not everyone. Even some of the web apps. we use that have come from 3rd parties only work properly in IE.
Considering the internal project I work on has been fighting with Corporate for months now over getting just one tiny Linux box for running CVS (Open Source?! We don't know how to back up something that's not a Windows box!), I'd hate to see the hell it takes to get Firefox, Opera, or anything else in here.
There are a lot of 400 lb. gorilla IT depts. out there running the computing for large corps. They don't like the security holes, but there's no budging them off IE. Combine that with the fact that non-technical people want to use one browser at home and work, and well, you have IE all over the place.
I have Firefox at home and love it. I turn on others where I can. I wish we had it at work, as my life would be easier. But, there's nothing I can do about that 400 lb. gorilla.
Occaisionally the slashdot homepage will not fully render in Firefox. It will appear blank except for images until a reload or two is done.
I've seen this a few times, but it's been a while since I last saw it happen.
The comments pages also tend to be text-biased too far left on occaision, rendering the comments' text a bit into the Sections and help left-sidebar.
For what it's worth, this is caused by the vertical ad on the right side of the page.
Even with the Adblock extension it still exhibits this behaviour.
Our elected leaders aren't keeping 3/4 of their revenue for themselves.
bugs != hole.
;)
- user profiles are a mess!
- Crash triple-clicking on textbox during page load.
- TestCookie crashes in NSPR logging
and so on, and so on.
What am I missing in the big bug-list? Hmmm. Remote exploits, security holes, javascript exploits, Active-X exploits.....
And - Clipboard does not work - can hardly be seen as a critical bug. It's a feature
Privacy is terrorism.
What about Tabbed Browsing, extensions, standards compliance and all that?
Firefox is more than IE SP2...
im in ur
I've been contemplating which thread to post this to, so I'll post it here.
Why does everyone thing we're "winning" against Microsoft/IE with Mozilla Firefox? It's not that we are winning, it's that Microsoft isn't playing anymore.
There's no reason for them to have the dominant browser on the market anymore, and one HUGE reason for them to explicitly NOT have the dominant browser. Their DOJ investigations focused, in part, on the fact that IE was bundled with Windows and thus constituted a monopoly. However, if Microsoft now lets IE flounder and lets Mozilla (or another browser) become dominant, they have a huge lever to use against any future DOJ or legal inqueries. They can then say they aren't a monopoly, as another browser is dominant.
And why not? There's no money to be made on IE - it's strictly a resource drain. They don't make a single dime from it... why pay someone to keep IE up to standards, when they can get the whole Open Source community to do it for free - in the form of Mozilla.
Stop and think about it for a moment, there's absolutely NO reason for MS to have the dominant browser any longer... there's no financial or legal advantage to it. A browser is effectively a commodity, and anyone developing one is going to have to expend resources to do so - with no return on that investment. Thus, Microsoft's only real logical conclusion would be to let IE slowly fade away, it solves not only the money/resource drain, but also protects them from further DOJ inquiries.
So Firefox isn't winning, exactly... Microsoft just took their ball and went home, because the game had no point for them anymore.
It became apparent to me that unless we techs educate (not proselytize) the method for `safe computing`, we are doomed.
This is much akin to how the CDC, HHS, etc, try to teach the public about safe sex. We have to make it appear important (because it is vitally so), but cannot risk alienating our audience for that very reason. Similar to sex-ed, if you have a weak link in your method, you're effed.
I worked on a user's PC this week that had current AV software, 2 different malware scanners, and was free of junk/popup software. Good, right? Oh, but he didn't have a SINGLE Microsoft patch on the system (it was XP Pro, box stock, pre SP1). Clearly, even though he was better then the average user, he missed critical knowledge about `Safe Computing`.
These are the kinds of hurdles we face before we can have any success on the desktop (as we know it now = largely Windows(TM)).
-- Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
Because that would just cause braindead developers to continue to do things wrong. Firefox is gaining momentum lately...a little message from the DHS gets people's attention much better than I ever did. I've since switched several people to firefox (they all love tabs, etc now).
The more people we switch, the more people who will complain that websites are broken.
Things will get better/are getting better. FOSS software should be relentless in its pursuit of implementing standards completely, and sticking to them. If we start tossing in hacks to support other broken software, we've already lost.
-Ben
If I go to a site that's coded for IE extensions, (or $deity forbid - ActiveX), I simply go elsewhere. They're not the only place selling their friggin widgets, and they just lost a customer.
Oh - I'm simply a techno-terrorist, geek syndrome, low demographic? Wise up! Most users are and abandoning IE.
I guess you're not letting your precious Firefox remember any passwords for you, then.
First of all, I use Safari all the time - unless I am on a Window or Linux box, then I use Firefox.
Second, correct, I do NOT let any browser remember passwords or sites I have visited (with the exception of the ones in my bookmarks).
Third, there is a difference between me the user making a bad security decision and the server (IE / Intranet) not giving me a choice.
- Tony