Slashdot Mirror
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.
The link to the official French recommendation is here: CERTA-2010-ALE-001
Quoting from it (rough translation): "while waiting for the editor [Microsoft] to correct this vulnerability, we recommend people use an alternate browser.
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Actually, any add on can be enabled for only a specific set of pages. For instance, to restrict the use of Flash in IE8, to go Tools->Manage Add-Ons then under the Adobe published by section, double click the "Shockwave Flash Object" (I don't know why Adobe can't just call it Flash), then under the text field titled "You have approved this add-on to run on the following websites:", click the button "Remove all sites". Now you'll get a gold bar on every site that uses flash in which you can allow the site to run flash or not. Not quite as nice as Flashblock, but still pretty good.