Zero-Day Team Launches with Emergency IE Patch

Holy Mother of Thor writes to mention an eWeek article about a third-party patch for Internet Explorer. A dark horse security group formed after the WMF attacks in late 2005, the ZERT (Zero Day Emergency Response Team) has released a patch to attempt to slow the malware attacks on Windows. From the article: "'It is clear that we are dealing with an underground group of people who are writing exploits for profits. They are waiting for Patch Tuesday to pass, then it becomes Exploit Wednesday. We're seeing these zero-days in the wild, timed precisely to guarantee at least an entire month to spread,' Stewart said in an interview with eWEEK. Stewart, who is volunteering his reverse-engineering skills and time to ZERT in his private capacity, wrote an early version of the VML (Vector Markup Language) patch the group released Sept. 22 and worked closely with others to fine-tune the update to minimize potential glitches."

Comments

Microsoft would have fixed this in 3 days

[Rik Sweeney]

but it didn't have anything to do with DRM

Spyware Thursday

[Yahma]

So we now have Patch Tuesday, Exploit Wednesday, and now what? Spyware Thursday..?

The majority of exploits could be stopped if Windows users switched to Firefox. However, getting Joe User to switch from IE to firefox is difficult, especially when he percieves no problems with IE. The majority of exploits in the wild today hide themselves from the user, and turn their machine into a Zombie node without their knowledge. Because Joe User doesnt know anything is wrong with his computer, he keeps using his unpatched IE and helps spread the exploit even further.

Yahma

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Re:Spyware Thursday

[iPodUser]

In my experience, it is not hard to convince "Joe User" to switch browsers. All I have to do is say: "ooh look tabbed browsing." If that fails, use "ooh look! Themes!" and they capitulate.
However, you correctly identified what the real problem is: Uneducated users. Once someone gives them a good talking to, they usually see the light. It's just hard (impossible) to reach all of the uninitiated noobs out there.

Re:Spyware Thursday

[tacocat]

Never seen that happen. They don't want the "good talking to". They just want their stuff to work the way they are used to seeing it.

Changing from MSIE to Firefox means you have to re-learn how to navigate around the browser. My wife went from Linux/Firefox to Apple/Safari and after a month she's bothered to figure out how to save bookmarks. She doesn't care about tabbed browsing settings or anything else. I think she's fairly typical in that she uses

I cite this as one example of many.

Not everyone is in love with their computer.

The conversion of my family hasn't been because of a good talking to. It's been because I simply won't allow a Windows machine in the house. They've learned how to use Linux and Apple nicely enough and in some cases prefer to do their school work on Linux/Apple.

Re:Spyware Thursday

[mysticgoat]

There is no superior technology or anything that would help to make Firefox inherently more secure.

Uh, not quite.

MSIE was rewritten in the mid 1990s so that core modules became an integral part of the Windows OS. It is generally recognized that maintaining a wall between OS and app is good engineering, partly because it avoids many difficult security issues. This is especially true when the application is an interface to the outside world that by nature cannot be secured, like a browser. MS in its wisdom determined that the immediate courtroom benefits of knocking that wall down outweighed the security and maintenance concerns. This was a central part of their defense strategy against lawsuits brought by Netscape and others.

So yes, Firefox's implementation of the available technology is inherently more secure. Firefox preserves the wall between itself and the OS, and is not a superhighway into the core of the OS, the way today's MSIE is.

time better spent elsewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Their time would be better spent on improving Free Software instead of trying to plug holes of closed-source software. Microsoft does not appreciate help like this.