France Tells Its Citizens To Abandon IE, Others Disagree

Freistoss writes "Microsoft still has not released a patch for a major zero-day flaw in IE6 that was used by Chinese hackers to attack Google. After sample code was posted on a website, calls began for Microsoft to release an out-of-cycle patch. Now, France has joined Germany in recommending its citizens abandon IE altogether, rather than waiting for a patch. Microsoft still insists IE8 is the 'most secure browser on the market' and that they believe IE6 is the only browser susceptible to the flaw. However, security researchers warned that could soon change, and recommended considering alternative browsers as well." PCWorld seems to be taking the opposite stance arguing that blaming IE for attacks is a dangerous approach that could cause a false sense of security.

Comments

PCWorld, kindly STFU

[girlintraining]

Hey PCWorld -- a vendor refusing to patch a product that has a major security hole in it that's very publicly known is criminally negligent, and yes, the correct answer is to stop using that product and punish the ever-living crap out of the executives and the company that isn't taking something like that seriously.

It'll never work...

[pookemon]

"Stop using IE"

Ok. I'll stop using IE8. But the problem wasn't in IE8 - it was in IE6 - so it was brought about by people who are using a version of IE that was replaced 1 to 2 years ago.

"Microsoft didn't patch the zero day bug"

Wouldn't matter if they had - these people are using IE6. Technically they did patch it - in IE7 and IE8 - and the people using IE6 haven't upgraded to the new free version - so what good would a patch do? Sure, MS could have withdrawn the installer and people could have upgraded using a new installer - but that would only reduce the number of people using it - it wouldn't eliminate it (there'd be all those disks floating around with IE6 as part of the operating installation).

And all this guff about "IE6 ruined the world" seems like crap anyway because if it wasn't IE6 then it'd be Acrobat, or Safari or Firefox or Opera or Chrome. If we all move to then they'd target . It's just that IE6 is still in use by a significant number of morons who probably don't have a virus scanner let alone any idea of why they shouldn't click the message that states "Your computer appears to have a virus...".

Frisky French

[syousef]

France and Germany agree on something?

The IE threat must be greater than previously imagined. Or...something.

France just hadn't surrendered to anyone in a little while and were getting frisky.

Re:Importance of Competitive Choices

[x2A]

My Mom had gotten used to netscrape and didn't want to switch, so she stuck to netscrape. She still uses some mozilla variant now (not firefox, can't remember its name).

So /I/ know that no choice was taken away. I physically saw it, a piece of software being run by someone, who's not a big techie or anything, just a causal user, that wasn't IE. If choice was, as you say, taken away, then I would not have seen that. The only thing that happened was that using a browser become more convenient, and netscrape lost out because it wasn't.

Proof is this little thing called "reality", as much as you think it sucks. I know a great many people who run firefox, who searched for, downloaded, and installed it themselves, despite being absolutely freakin clueless with everything else computer wise. Despite having IE on their desktop. Despite USING IE to search for it and download it.

Sorry to say, but if you think people all used IE instead of netscrape because "they had their choice taken away", you're a spaz.