IE6 Was Unsafe 284 Days In 2006

An anonymous reader sends us to the Washington Post's Security Fix blog, where Brian Krebs has toted up the total vulnerability days for IE6 users in 2006. From the article: "For a total 284 days in 2006 (or more than nine months out of the year), exploit code for known, unpatched critical flaws in pre-IE7 versions of the browser was publicly available on the Internet. Likewise, there were at least 98 days last year in which no software fixes from Microsoft were available to fix IE flaws that criminals were actively using to steal personal and financial data from users... In contrast, Internet Explorer's closest competitor in terms of market share — Mozilla's Firefox browser — experienced a single period lasting just nine days last year in which exploit code for a serious security hole was posted online before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem."

Comments

all a matter of perspective

[macadamia_harold]

IE6 Was Unsafe 284 Days In 2006

Of course the flip side of this story is that IE6 was safe for 81 days in 2006.

Obviously, the solution is to shorten the year to 81 days.

That's nothing

[hellfire]

My truck was unsafe 365 days. I could have been in an accident on any one of those days!

What does this mean?

[__aaclcg7560]

If IE6 was unsafe for nine months out of the year, what did it give birth to? Inquiring minds want to know...

Re:What does this mean?

[Aqua_boy17]

So THAT's where the Zune came from.

Moo

[Chacham]

For a total 284 days in 2006 (or more than nine months out of the year)

Yep, it took them nine months to get that baby.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you basing that on anything scientific? No. Just an uninformed opinion.

Welcome to Slashdot. Try the ramen.

Lobbyist hat on

[greymond]

At MS it is our commitment to better our security on all our applications. In 2006 we spent over 284 days researching and developing a series of bug fixes for our IE product line. This gave us over 98 days where IE was impenetrable to attackers and didn't require the need for any patches. Mozilla would like to claim that there product is safer than ours, yet they admit themselves that they had a period of 9 days where their browser was highly vulnerable to hackers and exploits. IE offers a web experience unsurpassed by any other browsers, compatible with every major website online today. If you choose to use an alternative browser it will still have flaws, but MS Windows allows you to choose, and having choices is what MS is all about. Would you really not want to have a choice in web browsers? Would you really want to only have Firefox and that be the end all be all to browsers? People need to have a choice, that's part of why this great country of America was founded.

I'M A WINDOWS GUY

[eno2001]

I use IE for everything and I've never once been hacked by these supposed security holes. I do all kinds of stuff like online banking, eTrade, eBay, online shopping, the works! And it's totally secure because it's all encrypted. Sure, I've had something like $24,000 worth of charges applied to my credit cards that weren't mine, but that wasn't because of IE. That was because I made the mistake of dealing with a few companies that use Linux or some Unix variant (heh, sounds like a disease we're talking about here instead of an OS) for their web portals and they probably got rooted. Open source software is just not safe. The hackers are all over it since it's all out in the open. Once they get a chance to look at how it works, they can easily make it do their bidding. At least Microsoft has the sense to keep stuff private. NO hackers in the entire world could figure any of that stuff out because there just isn't any single person as smart as Bill Gates and his crack team of developers. I wouldn't touch Firefox with a ten foot pole since it's open source. Although they only report the bugs they think they've found, there are probably billions more than MS has in IE because the hackers have a roadmap with open source. It says, "Here's the keys to the kingdom. Come hack me". I Trust MS products because MS is all about making great, innovative software that is secure and robust and stable.

NOTE: The above post is merely a parody of the Windows user who's "got religion". A reasonable Windows user knows better. A reasonable *nix user knows better. Let the games begin...