[Rinkeliacasse]

Serious security flaw found in IE
Microsoft Internet Explorer logo, file pic from 2004
Internet Explorer is used by the vast majority of the world's computer users

Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people's computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.

Microsoft urged people to be vigilant while it investigated and prepared an emergency patch to resolve it.

"Microsoft is continuing its investigation of public reports of attacks against a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer," said the firm in a security advisory alert about the flaw.

Microsoft says it has detected attacks against IE 7.0 but said the "underlying vulnerability" was present in all versions of the browser.

Other browsers, such as Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, are not vulnerable to the flaw Microsoft has identified. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7784908.stm

I'm glad I use FF.

[Ephejvll]

i use Safari and sometimes IE 8.0 if i have to.

[mybooboo]

i use Safari and sometimes IE 8.0 if i have to.

Tried IE 8 and had to reverse because it has an issue where the screen of my antivirus (McAfee) became invisable.

[AK47rulz]

more ridiculous scare mongering.

All MS stuff has more holes than a sieve since day 0

but what Ive noticed that the ones who get exploited by these hackers are the idiots that don't and use common sense on their day to day browsing habits.

I use Firefox BTW,not cos MS is pants and insecure,but because I liked it when I tried it even Firefox has had its major security issues In V3.00

[PaulRyansew]

more ridiculous scare mongering.

All MS stuff has more holes than a sieve since day 0

but what Ive noticed that the ones who get exploited by these hackers are the idiots that don't and use common sense on their day to day browsing habits.

I use Firefox BTW,not cos MS is pants and insecure,but because I liked it when I tried it even Firefox has had its major security issues In V3.00

Pretty much.

I know of a security consultant that when testing out how secure a client was, left a load of USB memory sticks lieing around the car park. Of course a few people got curious and plugged the sticks into their company PCs, which auto-infected the network.

[vRmy0Fzg]

I'd use firefox, if it didn't suck. My wife has the same problems I do. It randomly crashes. A LOT. I also hate how when I open a new window it always opens full screen.

[Nubtoubrem]

Well it's from Microsoft so Im not suprised haha..

Anyway, I also use FireFox and I like it except its high RAM usage with multiple tabs on altough not an issue, just annoying.

Anyone knows about that stupid rendering/syncing it makes very slow on some pages? My dad had a lot on his and did a small research and it seems it's a famous FF problem. [no]

[AK47rulz]

Well it's from Microsoft so Im not suprised haha..

Anyway, I also use FireFox and I like it except its high RAM usage with multiple tabs on altough not an issue, just annoying.

Anyone knows about that stupid rendering/syncing it makes very slow on some pages? My dad had a lot on his and did a small research and it seems it's a famous FF problem. [no]

you can limit its memory usage,and ive never suffered from any of those issues

[Rinkeliacasse]

I'd use firefox, if it didn't suck. My wife has the same problems I do. It randomly crashes. A LOT.

Must be your system. I, and many other people, use it with no problems

I also hate how when I open a new window it always opens full screen. Mine doesn't. Anyway, why not just open another tab?

[mybooboo]

My beef with IE has always been that if it gets corrupted in some obscure way, you are pretty much screwed, whereas with FF and others, you just reinstall. More to the original post, security issues are pretty much a given with MS.....anything. I don't even worry about it anymore unless there are full page articles in the NYT! [yes]

[Nubtoubrem]

you can limit its memory usage,and ive never suffered from any of those issues

Hmm. I have to find a page that is slow first haha. Well mostly this isnt a problem but well since my dad runs same res I am but on a 9800pro as well as single we thought maybe it was his hardware but he tried other pages and those were slow too, or well not slow but rendered very weird when you scrolled up and down and repeated.

[mashabox]

FF is shat in comparison and is probably far more full of security flaws.

[AK47rulz]

Hmm. I have to find a page that is slow first haha. Well mostly this isnt a problem but well since my dad runs same res I am but on a 9800pro as well as single we thought maybe it was his hardware but he tried other pages and those were slow too, or well not slow but rendered very weird when you scrolled up and down and repeated.

#

U sure its not an issue with sun java platform

[vRmy0Fzg]

Must be your system. I, and many other people, use it with no problems

My mother's PC is a stock sony vaio. Crashes. My wife has both a desktop and a Toshiba laptop. Both have crashes. It crashes on my gaming PC. Its definitely not unique to my system.

IE never crashes for any of us. I just find it odd that firefox doesn't work for crap on any PC I've ever used it on. I love the plugins you can get for it, but if it crashes all the time its useless to me.

It also has this weird error message even if you're not using it. My mom always got these weird pop-ups, even when not using firefox, about not being able to navigate to a non-local url or something. Caused problems with e-mail and IE. Uninstalled FF and it all went away.

Mine doesn't. Anyway, why not just open another tab? Tabs suck. I multi-task. I like to have a lot of different things visible all at the same time. Unless they've made changes to firefox whenever you open a new window it takes on the same window state as the parent. So if you run full screen it opens them full screen. Drives me nuts.

[Rinkeliacasse]

FF is shat in comparison

How so?

[Zzvukttz]

Tabs suck. I multi-task. I like to have a lot of different things visible all at the same time. Unless they've made changes to firefox whenever you open a new window it takes on the same window state as the parent. So if you run full screen it opens them full screen. Drives me nuts.

They must suck for you, but for me tabs ROCK. Most apps open a new window with the same dimensions as the parent window.

I can't remember the last time firefox crashed on ANY of my system, be they XP, Vista, Linux, or OS X. Even my XP virtual machine's firefox app has never crashed.

I love how if your firefox profile DOES get corrupted, you can simply start the profile manager, make a new profile and off you go.

With a combination of Firefox and IETab on my windows systems I never have to touch IE, even at work where the sites only work with IE, but I hate using it. So IETab comes to the rescue and I just tell FF which sites need to use the IE engine (all the donnelley sites).

[erelvenewmeva]

The summary they had up on slashdot mentioned MS instructing people to use another browser while they patch the hole..

[mashabox]

How so?

in my experience it hasn't displayed some websites properly. takes about twice as long to load up. i can't see why anyone would want to use it unless you wanted to jump on the anti-microsoft train.

[Rinkeliacasse]

in my experience it hasn't displayed some websites properly. takes about twice as long to load up. i can't see why anyone would want to use it unless you wanted to jump on the anti-microsoft train.

Hmm IE, for me, seems to take an age to start up compared to FF. And I hardly ever find websites that don't display properly in FF.

[vRmy0Fzg]

I can't remember the last time firefox crashed on ANY of my system, be they XP, Vista, Linux, or OS X. Even my XP virtual machine's firefox app has never crashed.

It used to do it pre-3 on specific sites. Now with 3+ it seems completely random.

Once that's fixed I'll write my own app to take care of the window sizing. I made one for IE to automatically place new windows where I want them. I'm sure I can fix the window sizing with my own app or a pre-made plugin.

Pre 3.0 this site was crashing it at least 75% of the time we visited: http://www.vwindependent.com/

Its not like the page is flash filled or anything. Its about as basic and redneck as a webpage can get.

They recommended it for blackboard.com when taking tests, but it kept crapping out on me. Couldn't even log in with firefox a few times, but IE worked perfectly. Things like that were driving me nuts.

^^ As for the loading issues I have noticed IE loads a bit faster than firefox. As for loading webpages I think firefox might be just a slight bit faster, but not enough to make me care. Don't care about the loading speed either TBH. The difference between the two is nothing noteworthy in my opinion. I do, however, have problems with FF not loading pages properly. I use it on rare occasions that I need to make use of a specific plug'in, because I'm too lazy to find something similar for IE.