Article: Windows web Threat.

In today's main newspaper ( Australian Herald/Sun) it reads:

Microsoft has issued a "critical" security alert that affects it's 900 million people using its Internet Explorer Web Browser.
The computer giant warned of a newly discovered flaw in Windows that could be exploited by hackers to steal personal details or take over computers.
The glitch is so severe it potentially affects every user of Internet Explorer.
Firfox, Google Chrome and Safari are unaffected because, unlike Internet Explorer they don't support MHTML files, where the problem lies.
The loophole only seems to affect the way Internet Explorer handles some web pages.
Internet Explorer users are urged to download a patch to stop any potential attach.
The company has been unable to remove the bug itself and has issued a "fix it" security patch to block any attempts to use it.
All Windows users are urged to download the patch while the companys secuirt team works on a permanent fix.

Mychael~

Can you provide a source link to this so it can be checked ???


That would help immensely .. i'm sure ..

Just a suggestion...

~LoneWolf

Again, just when we thought IE was getting it's act together, another monkey wrench gets thrown into the machinery.

Another reason to stick with either Firefox or Opera, in my humble opinion.

Try heraldsun.com.au That's the web page for the newspaper but I don't know how much of the daily news is accessible.
However we are talking about the major daily newspaper here, not that they cant be mis-informed but I think they'd be pretty careful checking out a story like that.

Here is the newspaper article for the Brits:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...-Explorer.html

Plenty of others if you search!

This is the patch:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2501696

I knew that IE9 was simply too good to be true. Well into it's beta stage, the browser one day quit responding at least five times. I simply removed it and stuck with Firefox, now at 3.6.13, and their beta is 4.0 Beta 10.

However, unlike the other betas of Firefox, I've shied away from it. The screen doesn't even appear to look as clear, and it still has a way to go before going mainstream. But 3.6.13 rocks! It's hard to beat it's options, performance & security.

Opera is looking better and better with every release, if IE was removed from Windows altogether (we no longer need it for updating), Opera outperforms IE hands down. But with the steep competition that Firefox & Chrome gives, it's going to be tough for Opera to climb very far.

As far as IE goes, it's always going to be a security threat, no matter what, as they don't have enough add ons to offer to secure the browser. That's just the way it is, and the way it'll always be. Where it not for the fact it's force fed by being built into Windows, it's usage figures (very doctored) would drop as fast as the stock market did on Black Monday in the late 80's.

Cat

It is actually IE8 which is mentioned, Cat.But maybe IE9 (Beta) is affected for those who are testing it.
In defense, sort of, anything produced by Microsoft is , to hackers, like dangling a fish in front of a cat. Microsoft, imo, is not weaker in its security, just more tempting to Hakers.

M/S is certainly a bigger target. Linux probably has friends 'cos it's free.
Apple is getting very big and have a lot of product placement yet so far they have by and large been immune to serious hacks whilst M/S has pretty much been under attack in one form or another since Windows 95 and the internet.
Be interesting to see the future and if Apple O/S becomes more of a target.

I think it may partly be because M/S is more the faceless corporation and has 'users' as opposed to true fans or followers like Apple and Linux. Being the biggest and being liked are not the same thing and I could be wrong but I would doubt if M/S has any 'friends' in the way Apple or Linux does.

Good to know; thanks for the info.

I've only used IE once on this install, and that was to download Firefox. I don't foresee IE9 changing this either, based on what I've read about it.

This is a bug in Windows - not IE.