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Penn State Tells Students To Ditch IE
Hoyceman writes "About 80,000 students and staff are being told to use an alternate browser. The Penn State ITS department sent the alert 'because the threats are real and alternatives exist to mitigate Web browser vulnerabilities.' InformationWeek is carrying the story."
The students finally get an education.
Why UNIX?
When I was there, Penn State's IT group was rather inept. Glad they're starting to take security and computing infrastructure seriously. Good job guys!
AC karma whore post:
Penn State Tells 80,000 Students To Chuck IE Dec. 10, 2004
A public university with an enrollment of over 80,000 puts the kibosh on Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
A public university with an enrollment of over 80,000 put the kibosh this week on Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and urged its students to switch to alternative browsers such as Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, or Safari.
Penn State University on Wednesday issued an alert to students and staff recommending that they dump IE and use a different browser.
The university's Information Technology Services (ITS) gave the advice "because the threats are real and alternatives exist to mitigate Web browser vulnerabilities," ITS said in a statement. It cited the security problems in IE that have been the focus of both media reports and recommendations from such organizations as the US-CERT, the federally-funded computer response team housed at Carnegie Mellon University.
"The University computing community [should] use standards-based Web browsers other than Internet Explorer to help minimize exposure to attacks that occur through browser vulnerabilities," added ITS.
Penn State's advice is the latest negative news about Microsoft's popular browser. Security problems continue to plague IE -- some patched, some not -- while rivals like Firefox slowly nibble away at its still-dominating market share.
Will this ITS department support issues with other browsers. Each browser has its quirks, and work arounds for certain things. If they recommend using other browsers, they must be able to support them, especially if they run proxies.
I ditched it as soon as I discovered Camino (fka Chimera).
Penn state students tell college to ditch Joe Paterno
Kudos to Penn State for not falling into the "it's built into the OS so we'll use it as a standard!" trap.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
I go to Temple University and while our CS department hasn't gone that far they have installed Firefox on all the computers in the labs
2) They'll sue
3) They'll go on a charm offensive
4) They'll spin the virtues of Longhorn
5) They'll talk about IE's innovative approach to browsing
Others...?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I believe the 80,000 refers to the students, not the staff.
Before any liberals are tempted to mod up one of my comments, a word of warning: I'm actually making fun of you.
Joe Pa...
Joe Pa...
I say M.O., you say 'zilla!
...'zilla!
...'zilla!
M.O....
M.O....
(pause)
MOZILLA!!!
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
At Brown we get a CD with all the latest security patches and a copy of Firefox every year. Prevents trouble, methinks.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
But make sure that your alternate browser it is a recent version of Firefox or Mozilla. They have responded very quickly to security issues, and are being proactive about security, much more so than the the people behind Konqueror or Opera. Also, keep your alternate browser patched just as vigilantly as you would Internet Explorer. As the popularity increases you will see more attacks against Mozilla based browsers.
I don't know what the answer to security is. I hope it isn't educating users, because that just plain doesn't work for most people. The problem is that right now there doesn't seem to be any other way.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
if a student can run safari as an alternative, then he/she must be using a Mac. not to defend IE, but isn't IE for Mac less dangerous than IE for Windows? if he/she has already ditched Windows, does he/she need to ditch IE too?
Looks like IE get burned by the very same 'feature' that allowed it to get 95% market share : integration with Windows and total access to stuff it shouldn't. Lesson learned, Microsoft?
But even without security, FireFox is just plain better. Tabbed browsing is huge, Bookmark toolbar, extensions, find-as-you-type (HUGE improvement over CTRL+F search)... Now I look at IE (the rare time I need to open it for windowsupdate) and it just feels...dirty.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
At my college the first thing I did on every computer I touched was to install Firefox. I also put Winamp on a few open lab computers for listening to Internet radio while I worked.
Recently I became unable to login to my student account, with a message "Your account has been disabled, please speak to your network administrator."
Well I went and found my network administrator to ask about what was up. Apparently it is against school policy to install programs on their computers. This is totally understandable and reasonable, and I apologized. But he decided I needed to be chewed out and he had a killer fact that he just knew would crush me.
Looking me in the eyes he proceeded to tell me that due to me installing Firefox and Winamp on two of the open lab computers they no longer function and had to be totally reformatted. This man, who is in charge of keeping the school network secure, seriously thinks that Firefox and Winamp could possibly be the root of a computer's DEATH. I did not argue the matter no matter how ridiculous it is; I just wanted my account back.
How is it they let people become the network administrator for an entire technical college, a college that hands out degrees in technical fields, that are just that ignorant. How can any competent network admin possibly think Firefox and Winamp are causing a computer to not boot?
So now under threat of permanently losing my student account I am forced to use IE. It is excruciating, because I am not the only person installing software on the open lab computers, just the only one knowledgeable enough to install useful non adware-infested programs. Just opening Internet Explorer results in about 3 minutes of closing popups.
--- "End Of Line" - MCP
At my university I am a student helpdesk worker and everytime someone calls about spyware problems I always recommend they install firefox. Also on the cd of software we include for all 6000 students on campus we have firefox as well as openoffice. No one objects to using firefox and are actually happy to hear that it will make their spyware issues go away.
Although Penn State has issued this warning, it is far from true. All Penn State Computer Lab Machines have IE set as the default, and group policy is set such that you cannot switch even to the installed version of Firefox. In addition the Firefox user settings are stored in Application Data which has a 20 meg quota. This means whenever a user tries to log out after browsing, it refuses saying there is too much data. IE on the otherhand, gets cleaned of cookies and cache automatically so that when you log out there is never a problem with the quotas. If Penn State wants to actually get people to switch, they should do something about it on their own machines.
The college of ed at a major state university where a certain couple famous people recently debated, where I used to work only uses IE on their systems. They also used Windows 98 until recently (now they use XP). During the hay day of blaster and myDoom and whatnot guess which department was the least affected by it all? The College of Ed. Even with all our Win98 boxes being directly on the wire. Even our division of teachers was the least affected. There were a few that turned off automatic update like we told them not to and those were the ones that got it.
Guess who was most affected by the worms? The engineering department which requires logging onto the domain with your student ID and who run Windows 2000.
The College of Ed tech support people actually did their job and that prevented a lot of problems. So the fact that the IT people of Penn State are sending out a warning to 80,000 students just makes me laugh.
Our wonderful IT deparment can't even keep the network running reliably during heavy usage times such as pre-registration week and when grades come out.
IE and Windows aren't the problem.
Sending out a rediculous warning e-mail isn't going to do anything for them or the open source movement. People keep telling me the sky is falling and I've yet to see it actually happen to my systems.
A better solution would be to educate the students on where to get the free VirusScan software from the university and how to keep it up to date along with their Windows system.
It doesn't matter what browser you're using. It needs to be kept up to date.
Work Safe Porn
Department of Duh." Sheesh. Windoze lusers have to be most impervious people on earth. How many times do their systems have to get compromised before they dimly ponder alternatives? Infinity -1, apparently.
we will end no whine before its time
It's been the onofficial policy for my University's helpdesk to install FireFox on any students' computers, particularly if they've been having Spyware problems. Here's part of an e-mail sent out on Nov. 5 to the entire Yale Community.
To Selected Members of the Yale Community:
We wanted to send you an important reminder about your privacy and
security while browsing the Internet. We are concerned about certain
vulnerabilities inherent in Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE). Even if
you do not use this application as your browser, you should consider a
read through for information about keeping your computer updated.
Due to its popularity, MSIE has increasingly been the target of technical
exploits and sophisticated "phishing" schemes. We strongly encourage you
to take certain precautions for your own security:
1. First and foremost, verify that your computer is updated with current
patches and updates. The best and easiest way to do this is to set your
computer to automatically update its operating system and antivirus
software. If you need assistance doing this, please see below for contact
information.
2. There are known vulnerabilities in MSIE that do not yet have patches.
This has happened in the past and appears likely to happen again in the
future. We recommend that you either:
a) Refrain from visiting unknown websites or providing personal or
financial information while using MSIE, unless you are absolutely certain
you are dealing with a truly reputable website (for example the CDW-G
website in the Yale ePortal).
b) Use an alternative web browser such as Mozilla or Safari. The Yale
Software Library (www.yale.edu/software) provides recommended alternatives
that are easy to install and provide the same basic functionalities as
MSIE. There are some web pages that will only display properly in MSIE
(since it contains certain special proprietary functions), but most web
browsing can be accomplished using the alternatives.
But Firefox, being open-source, can be fixed so as to eliminate the need for workarounds. The IT department can coordinate with the project developers and find solutions. Something closed-source doesn't do nearly as well.
As annoyed as I am with Microsoft in general, if they would make the Windows XP source code shared-source, I'd track down and fix bugs I found. I wouldn't mind. I'd be Microsoft's biggest fan if their stuff would just work worth a crap.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
You are dealing with a Windows admin. For many of them, the common reason for everything is that the problem is someone else's fault. That someone else being a combination of Microsoft, Firefox, Winamp, the computer's mood that day, some virus, "an act of God," or hackers that don't really exist. Don't take it personally.
Open Source Sushi
Most college admins' time is spent dealing with student spyware. IE is a big source of it (though not the only one). Something's got to give. I think it's a great idea to recommend installing Firefox and to lock out machines with spyware run amok. I'd think that mandating Ad-Aware and/or SpyBot would be an even bigger help. I don't know the feasibility, but if they could force any connecting machine to identify itself as having SP2 installed, that by itself would be a huge start. They just don't have the time to deal with unprotected machines.
Then you should have a look at portable firefox: http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/ or here http://portablefirefox.mozdev.org/ (within the next week)
How is it they let people become the network administrator for an entire technical college, a college that hands out degrees in technical fields, that are just that ignorant.
Because technical colleges are a joke as far as technology degrees are concerned. They also probbably pay jack shit to a network administrator, so they wind up with people who believe in computer voodoo. i.e. "it must have been that mysterious fire-fox and win-amp that those damn kids are all hopped up on these days." Remember, to anyone non-technical it's often hard to tell the difference between a good network administrator and a bad network administrator.
AccountKiller
They've recently been merged with/taken over by a larger college in a nearby town, and the surviving IT department is in the process of converting the site from
Common Sense doesn't always win.
A couple of months ago I was trying to convince the head of ITS at my work to switch to Mozilla. When Firefox went 1.0 he obliged and we did a complete rollout to all clients. The only real problem being that many Web programmers do not conform to W3C standards and only build applications that are compatible with IE. Personally, I do not use IE and have not for a long time, but the pages that I do create conform to W3C standards. The move to any browser is dependant on how pages are written. More of the IT/programming world should take this into account if we are to see a greater move away from M$ IE
Little anectdotal evidence from someone who goes to Penn State:No.
When I am on campus and need to print something(something that seems to come up fairly often since most hw assignments for certain classes are avaialable only online), I always laugh at the fact that students are willing to stand in line and wait for a windows computer rather than use the Macs which are always available. Doesn't bother me though, I just go right to the front of the line and go in, do what I need to do, and get out. I highly doubt most of the students are doing anything on those windows machines that cannot be done on a Mac, but for whatever reason they refuse to use them.....I will leave guesses as to the reason as an exercise for the reader.
Monstar L
During a major network reworking project at a college apartment complex, my partner and I recommend that the comlpex go over to Firefox. The interesting thing is that some of the tenats referred to the new internet at "Firefox" internet, as opposed to "Internet Explorer" internet. And even better was the fact that several of the tenats asked where they could get his new "internet." Out of the people over in the complex nearly half have switched over to Firefox. The exposure of Firefox actually started in their Internet lounge. And since people saw that the complex was using Firefox they started to what it. So I think that the best way to get some of these alternative standards-based browsers out is for exposure in main stream enviroments.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
I submitted this same story with a lot more detail (but not the InformationWeek link) 28 hours prior to the timestamp on this story. It was rejected. Sure, mod me off-topic if you think I'm whining.
I posted my write-up in my journal for posterity's sake. Replies are welcome on this post in regards to the actual news story. Comments as to why you think the submission was rejected should only be posted in the journal. (You don't want to be off-topic, right?) Did I submit at the wrong time of day? Was the submission too long? Ok... enough whining.
I won't make you do unnecessary clicking, so here are some of the relevant links that I found:
Penn State's own news article
Chronicle of Higher Education article
ZDnet article
The journal entry also has comments taken from a PSU IT personnel listserv, as well as other links.
I'm going to school at Baker College and at my campus, they've got Deep Freeze on all the computers. You are logged on as admin* and can install whatever you want, but when the computer is restarted it goes back to its original condition. It installs a filter driver that keeps track of all writes to the main disk, logs them and prepares to undo them upon restart. All your documents/files you want to keep are put on removable media (they'll get undone upon restart otherwise). Authorized admins can disable this temporairily to make permanent changes. Turn on a computer and it is in pristene condition; no crap, regardless of what the previous user did. This might not be so good for home use, but for the pre-installed standard lab environment needed for the computers, it works beautifully.
I would definately recommend Deep Freeze for any place with requirements like this. Put all the user profiles and documents on a central server, cluster or removable media and make permanent local changes impossible.
Viruses on the document storage area should be the only malware left; if you put it on a server, it can be scanned easily.
* It's not quite full admin, as you can't install new services or drivers; they might mess with Deep Freeze.
I go to Harvard University, and am a User Assistant -- basically, a student-employee of Computer Services who helps undergrads with computer problems. Our policy whenever someone comes in with a problem, be it a virus or spyware or even a simple problem with Eudora, is to install Firefox. I have never had a user object, and when I show them some features like tabbed browsing, they really warm to the browser. One girl even said that she used DeadAIM primarily for the tabs and loved it that Firefox came with such a feature too.
Of course, the best thing is that once the user is firewalled and virus-protected and has SP2 and Firefox, he or she will probably never come into the Clinic again!
I have the same problem at Rutgers and here's my way around it.
Instead of reinstalling every time get the zipped distro of firefox and put it on a usb drive. It can be personalized a little:
replace Firefox\defaults\profile\bookmarks.html with your saved bookmarks
and copy the contents of Firefox\plugins to Firefox 1.0\plugins on the usb drive.
I havn't tried it with any themes or extensions yet.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
Sometimes, thanks to clueless professors, I've needed to use IE. I actually talked to two professors about using standards instead of cheap development tools that foist garbage on their students and would require expensive software and break in a year or two. It was like talking to a brick wall and they could care less. I was polite, and I can only hope that they remember me and think, "hmmm, that guy was right."
Having a University policy in place would be great. The line, "Use a standard browser" would no longer work. More importantly, stuff that does not work with Mozilla or Konqueror would get fixed and that would spare me a few trips to the library.
A policy like that would also be nice for the staff. Morons who think Microsoft is some kind of standard would get the message loud and clear. More importantly, this removes any kind of lingering FUD about the University not "supporting" alternate browsers. I'm sure the IT staff would love it too because they are the ones who get to spend the all nighters and who bear the embarrassment of turning off whole dorms and sections of campus when the next M$ born worm crawls through.
This kind of transition has been happening at my University but slowly. The student log in still has an advertisement for Microsoft software on the first page but all the public kiosks in the Union have been converted to Linux terminals running Mozilla. The continuing security dissaster is finally getting solved with something other than the blame the user game.
It's nice to hear some good news coming from Penn State.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If this is their public face, it most likely means that the place is run by total dicks. You're better off switching to a different school.
Okay, dumbwad, how many times do we have to explain this to you? IT IS = IT'S; IT possessive = IT'S.
so close and yet so far...
You also have to realize that although you consider yourself to be more knowledgeable than this admin, there are lots and lots of users who are way, way lower on the scale. At my school, the network admins are currently squabbling with the faculty over an attempt to keep faculty from attaching their own dekstop machines to the campus network. Well, I really don't think the FreeBSD box on my desk is a likely source of infection, but the plain truth is that there are a lot of lusers who just don't have the faintest clue about how to keep their Windows box secure.
Find free books.
As a linux and firefox user, this is probably the wrong approach. Students should not be told that they must or must not use any particular piece of software as long as that software doesn't damage the network (I don't think IE causes nearly as many problems as p2p on college campuses).
My school has a slightly different way of dealing with this (at least for dorm computers): If your machine appears to be infected, they cut your internet access. Then, they'll fix your computer and give you a talk about security, but only once.
If you get infected again, you lose internet access, and don't get it back until you demonstrate that your machine has been reformatted. Every time. All of a sudden, even the most non-techie people start to be a little more careful, and start listening to you.
The CIO called a meeting on security, brought in all the CIO's and CS managers from the University branchess for the state, and among other things, we talked about what to do about the slew of problems with student machines.
I pointed out that students get zero education on computer security, and that if they really wanted to fix the problem, they would create a 1 credit required gen-ed course on personal computer security. Students would thus be required to learn how to keep junk off their desktops one hour a week for a semester (plus it would be an excuse to give remedial computer usage insruction to some of the freshmen that come from living-under-a-rock high school.)
That idea raised some eyebrows. They said "now, THAT's thinking out of the box." They diligently noted it in their notepads and pointless PDA gizmos.
And then, did absolutely nothing.
But that's about what I was expecting, that just because they had the wherewithal to recognize a good idea when they heard it, didn't mean they would remember it for more than a week. That's not how it works. If it doesn't reach crisis proportions, these types of people don't do crap about it.
Someone had to do it.
When I was in school, I remember using Netscape 3 to view webpages (after all, we were using Unix).
I'd rather say that universities are going back to their roots. IE was designed for home computers and the Joe User, not for universities.
At Carnegie Mellon, considered to be one of the best tech schools in the world, all students (even CS and ECE majors) are required to take Computing Skills Workshop. The very first lesson in the course is on security and passwords. It also covers UNIX commands, file management, and access rights.
After a few weeks, most people realize that they can skip the classes and only show up for exams, so it's not really a waste of time for those who do not need it. However, for those who do, it ensures that they have a baseline level of computing knowledge, which helps keep our network safer.
| Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
I am currently a student at Penn State Altoona that oversees a team of students that fix computers on campus. Myself and another avid read of slashdot having been pushing the movement to get rid of IE long before ITS officialy declared it a threat. All the students I have given FireFox to have thank me graciously and love not having ridiculously amounts of popups.
Penn State takes the network very seriously and has as implemented many network policys. They have search and deactivate probes on the network to determine if a host is infected and secondly they lock the terminals in the dorms to specific MAC addresses. The team is constantly reactivating virus-cleaned computers. The network security could be compared that of government security.
Anti-InternetExplorer is the primary spyware and virus solution.
Oh what a bleak, sober, secure future it will be!
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Where I work this is how the network admin fixes problems on his windows boxes. 1.Reboot. 2.Reboot again. 3.Wait. 4.Reboot again. 5.Fiddle around some windows clicking on various things. 6.Wait. 7.Reboot. Ask him what's the problem is : "I don't know." Anyway after X amount of time it's fixed no one knows how it was fixed, what it was or to prevent it again...
I bet you worked a full-time job, walked on the football and basketball teams and played in the band at half time too.
what does it matter how long one stays in school ?
People should not buy Gateway, or Dell, or HP, or whatever.
I bought my logo-chiseled-off-with-a-blunt-screwdriver laptop from Fell-Off-a-Truck, Inc. (their Back-of-a-Van-in-the-Safeway-Parking-Lot branch), and I'm pretty sure that Microsoft didn't get a penny of my money, even though the laptop came with MS-Windows XP (Ukranian version) pre-installed (along with a file containing thousands of credit card numbers, a directory named "CIA Dirty Tricks", and lots and lots of porn).
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Yes but ... there are some compensating features at Stark State campus ... when I went to their website I checked the Campus Building Map and noted the cool Fire Science training tower (Fire Science apparently gets two dedicated parking lots) and a nifty Diebold Incorporated Advanced Technology Center.
I want to find out how to incinerate paper backup copies of electronic voting.
All sigs should be as funny as possible, but no funnier.