Yet another reason why NOT to use M$ IE

By Brian Krebs
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, June 26, 2004:

A new Internet virus has surfaced that allows hackers to steal passwords, credit card numbers and other personal information when someone merely visits an infected Web site, government computer security experts warned this week.

Hundreds of Web sites have been targeted by the virus, which exploits flaws in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Internet software, according to an alert issued Thursday by the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

Infected sites were programmed to connect people using the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser to a Web site that contains code allowing hackers to record what users type, such as passwords and credit card and Social Security numbers. The code then e-mails that information to the anonymous attackers...

Computers experts urged Internet users to install firewalls and antivirus software and to download the latest updates. A CERT alert said Explorer users also can protect themselves by turning off the java-script function in their browsers. That change, however, can impair Internet browsing since java-script is a programming language used to add interactive functions to many Web sites.

The attack takes advantage of several recently discovered security flaws in Microsoft's Internet browser and Internet Information Services Web software. Microsoft released a patch in April to fix one security hole in its Internet browser; the company is still working on a patch for the other flaw, which security researchers publicly detailed less than two weeks ago.

CERT recommends that Explorer users consider other browsers that are not affected by the attack, such as Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape and Opera. Mac, Linux and other non-Windows operating systems are immune from this attack. For people who continue to use the Internet Explorer, CERT and Microsoft recommend setting the browser's security settings to "high," but that can impair some browsing functions.

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dr_mabeuse said:

I've switched to Mozilla Firefox, and it's fine, excpet the window I have to type my LIt posts in is now like 2 inches wide, and my right click button doesn't do things that it did in IE and I can't customize my toolbar and move things around like I could in IE, and some sites don;t seem to open right.

I used to have a link to MSWord in my browser toolbar, and that won't take here.

All in all, I liked IE better, but Firefox seems more secure. I was picking up bugs and things in IE.

---dr.M.

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On the other hand, I can't quite live without the Firebird style tab browsing.

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Quilty, if I could hire a personal assistant he or she would be as much like you as possible in the cranial area (though I'd probably want them to have a Yorkshire accent).

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