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UK Gov't Says "No Evidence" IE Is Less Secure
aliebrah writes "Lord Avebury tabled a parliamentary question in the UK regarding the security of Internet Explorer and whether the UK government would reconsider its use. He got an answer from the UK Home Office that's unlikely to please most Slashdot readers. The UK government contends that 'there is no evidence that moving from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure.'"
That's very likely true, as the stupidity of the user remains the weakest factor in security.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
It's one thing to say there is insufficient evidence, but *no* evidence?!
In UK governmental English, "to table" apparently means something like "to propose" or "to bring up for consideration", almost exactly the opposite of the U.S. meaning, which is "to withdraw from further consideration".
I guess there's some international disagreement over whether this mythical table is where you put things to be considered, or where you put things to die. Perhaps to Britons, putting things on a table is officially proposing them, whereas to Americans, if it's on the table it's inert, and if you want it proposed, you had better have it in your hand waving it in someone's face.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
A fully patched IE8 running on either Vista or Windows 7 is far safer than Firefox. Why?
- Low privileged mode. IE8 runs with lower rights than the logged in user, Firefox doesn't...
- DEP is turned on for IE8 by default. Firefox has to be added (or the "all applications" option).
- IE8 patches can be deployed from the Domain very easily. Firefox on a corporate network is a pain in the butt...
Now I entirely grant that this is Microsoft's browser running on Microsoft's OS and thus it gains unfair advantages but that doesn't change the facts or reality of the situation.
They just need grow suspicious of IE harboring WMDs. Then the lack of evidence wouldn't be a problem at all.
The latest patched version of Internet Explorer fixed the bugs that Microsoft found. The latest patched version of other browsers fixed the bugs that other browser-manufacturers found. Ergo, there is no evidence that the latest patched version of Internet Explorer are less secure, since the officially "known" security features have been fixed.
In fact, there's no evidence that there are any bugs at all in the latest patched versions of any software ever written, unless the manufacturers have explicitly stated that there are. In which case, in order for policymakers to accept such a report, they would need to prove that this is the case, by lobbying the government to the effect that their software is inferior.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
I don't know why it would "not please" Slashdot readers. I am very pleased. That is the funniest thing I've read all week.
Nothing like a good laugh to start your morning.
Are these the same people who said IRAQ was full of WMDs and terrorists?
No sig today...
You get your IT news from the register? Coool!
More seriously - you link to that page, with words that seem to indicate there are a LOT of Firefox exploits in the wild. Care to name some? The IRC exploit only counts as one.
One more time, I'll point up Firefox's main advantage over IE: Vulnerabilities are made public, and people actually address the vulnerabilities as quickly as possible. Firefox exploits aren't hidden under a mountain of shit by some corporate boss, so that he hopes they can go away.
IMHO, Firefox is just about as safe as a browser can be, today, based on current knowledge. It ranks right up there with Chrome and Opera, and Safari, and Konqueror.
IMHO, Internet Explorer MIGHT be almost as secure - if and when people finally upgrade from IE6 to at least 7, and preferably 8. MIGHT BE. You'll notice that MS didn't publicize this newest vulnerability, until Google and others had already done so.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Probably because they are.
By "insufficient evidence" they usually mean "we've not heard enough to convince us". Which means "Someone was telling us stuff, but we don't really understand the field that they were trying to explain about. Instead of trying to understand the stuff we don't understand, we prefer to play nice with the money, because that tells us it's all good.".
The prime qualifications in Labour are history, classics, and a few Lawyers, advertising and marketing. Not really anyone with any solid scientific skills.
So, rather than work out the hard stuff, and make scientific dispassionate decisions which will make the country stronger and genuinely safer, they prefer to use rhetoric and assume that things work by fiat (we say the world works that way, ergo it does, because we say, which is why it lost pretty much the core of its drugs advisory group because the scientific advice of some highly qualified and internationally renowned people was completely ignored, and the opposite decision was made as policy, AND the politician hounded the scientist for not backing him up and twisting scientific results to fit into what he wanted things to be like).
I don't trust 'em as far as I can spit 'em. They need to understand scientific method, not empty rhetoric.
"The reason for this statement by the UK government is very simple - it has intranet and business systems in virtually every government department which work only with IE. They frequently ridiculously old versions at that - IE6 take a bow - giving the lie to the "latest, fully patched" comment anyway. There is no way that the UK government is going to incur the conversion costs for these systems at this moment given the state of its books at the moment. Stating that IE was insecure would create an inexorable pressure to do exactly that. This statement has nothing to with security, and everything to do with internal government politics.
That's NOT a Firefox exploit. That's Firefox send a normal HTTP request to a non-standard port (6667), and the IRC server *wrongly* interprets it as IRC protocol.
The only thing they say Firefox does "wrong" is actually connecting to a non-standard port, which I dispute: there are plenty of reasons to run webservers in non-standard ports, and I want to be able to connect to them.
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The quote bears no reflection of any opinion on the security or quality of IE in general. The "user" being referred to in the quote is UK government staff, using UK government IT, and his response is wholly within that context. As is very often the case on Slashdot (and, to be fair, much of the media), the summary shifts the context slightly and then omits significant information and thus infers something other than what was communicated at the time.
Immediately after the quoted text, unmissable except by the most... Let's give the benefit of the doubt and say hurried of submitters and editors, is the following: (my emphasis added for the most hurried of Slashdot readers)
only need to google it for chrissakes:
IE ~ 1200: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q="internet+explorer"+site%3Awww.us-cert.gov
Firefox ~ 800: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q="firefox"+site%3Awww.us-cert.gov
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Evidence was gathered on a Tuesday.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
It was the Home Office that gave the reply some people don't like, even if it is probably true.
Only on a technicality.
Technically, at this moment in time there are precisely no publicly known exploits for a fully patched up to date copy of IE, a fully patched up to date copy of Firefox or a fully patched up to date copy of Opera.
The fact that history has shown us that exploits for IE tend to show up more frequently, are often nastier than exploits for Firefox or Opera and are almost never dealt with in an out-of-cycle patch (and so will be exploitable for that much longer) is neither here nor there. This is absolutely typical of any UK government department (and probably the same in many Western countries) - when you're asked a question which you don't necessarily like, interpret it in a fashion which allows you to give an answer which you do like.
Admitting that IE may be more dangerous isn't in and of itself a huge problem but it may well invite a lot more questions like "How many internal government systems only work with IE?" - and I bet you anything you like the answer is not "Zero".
What I notice is that the headline and most of the discussion here talk about the security of "IE", while the Home Office said "the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer". There seems to be little understanding that these aren't synonyms.
But does anyone here work for an organization of any sort (government, industry, academia, whatever) that requires that everyone use "the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer"?
In all the cases that I know of, when there's such standardization, it's for releases that existed shortly before the standard was established. It's now years later, and the standard is still in place (though often violated by workers who want better security or more features).
A number of people have written about organizations that are still standardized on IE6 and don't permit upgrades to IE8. Is there any data available on how widespread this might be? In my experience, such data is hard to come by, since both governments and private corporations tend to be secretive about their inner workings.
So could the Home Office be pushing for upgrades to W7+IE8? Nah; I thought not.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
matters like these. with their paranoid attention to detail, psychopathic inclination to procedure, and ungodly patience with working on intricate technical details, any word from germans in that area would trample any word from britain at any point for me.
the fact that u.k. government has been shitting and screwing up in every other field for the last 10 years does not help either.
Read radical news here
With closed source software, you're at the mercy of the manufacturer when it comes to even getting an acknowledgment of security issues, let alone receiving fixes in a timely fashion or before damage is already done.
This argument endlessly amuses me. Do you really think the exact same thing is not true of OSS-based browsers such as Firefox and Chrome?
Hint #1: If you have not personally evaluated the source code of the browser you are using, nor employed a skilled specialist to do so for you, then you are just as dependent on other parties over whom you have no direct control to identify and patch security issues before the bad guys exploit them. The theoretical possibility that you can examine the source code is just security theatre unless you actually spend the time and resources to do it.
Hint #2: Which OSS browser do you think has a public bug database listing all known vulnerabilities, whether or not they have yet been patched, and keeps that database updated immediately every time a new vulnerability is reported?
With Firefox, there is generally a very high degree of transparency when it comes to security problems.
Unless you are one of the select few with access to the full security issue process, you don't know that.
Additionally, fixes are pushed out quickly.
Or that.
Although Firefox continues to gain market share, the actual damage caused by exploits continues to remain quite low. That's certainly not the case with IE, and as long as it's closed source that won't change.
Or any of that.
If you really don't see the blind spot you're exhibiting here, try answering these simple questions (and be honest with yourself):
If you can't immediately answer those questions, and provide yourself with objective, factual data to support your claims above, then please consider that you may just be projecting your own prejudices based on IE6 from many years ago onto the IE8 of today, while letting your own faith in OSS onto other browsers convince you that they are more secure even though you don't have access to all the facts.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Answers you won't listen to:
When 20 other people have gone through a door and come back out again, I will assume that it's safe to walk through the door. Likewise though I may not have read all the code in Firefox, if there were any big problems, someone WOULD have seen it: Microsoft do not have half the world's web browser writers,
How many people HAVE the latest version of IE? Now how many NEVER use flash or Adobe plugins? Because they require you turn off the security and then IE8 becomes vulnerable again. Did you know that?
Google would have got dinged. Likewise, please do the same about Firefox. You've narrowed the window so small there's nothing left of the hole.
And how would YOU answer?
IE8 today has many or most of the downsides that IE6 has. Unless you lock it down so much you can't use it.
But FF 3.5 when locked down as much is still usable. Putting it under LIDS makes it much safer. Adding RBAC from NSA makes it yet more secure.
And still usable.
You cannot say the same of IE and Windows.