Yet another reason why NOT to use M$ IE

[Clare Quilty]

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.

Why you should switch to Mozilla FireFox Browser

 

[dr_mabeuse]

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.

 

[Clare Quilty]

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.

You can customize the behavior of the right mouse button-- not to mention extend it greatly over anything that IE offers.

I detailed one way to make a link to a new word document in the bookmarks tool bar in another thread.

edited: Also, if you want a link to M$ WORD on your bookmarks toolbar, that is easy to do. Just navigate to "manage bookmarks," make a new bookmark in your "bookmarks toolbar folder (which should be the one on top)" then make a black word document in whichever directory (C:\ for example) finally link the new toolbar bookmark to the newwordfile.doc file.

When you click on the icon in your toolbar, word will launch and bring up the dummy file you just created.

You may want to check out some of the extensions available. There is some truly amazing functionality available for FireFox.

You can move items in the bookmarks tool bar by simply dragging them to a different position.


Edited: There is an extension available for a Google-bar, if one goes in for that sort of thing.

 

[Randi Grail]

News? New weird hacker exploits for MISE are discovered on a daily basis. Ah the joy of operating system integrated communication software.

The small box for typing messages in is due to a stylesheet coding error in vBulletin. But yeah, it's annoying.

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

What? I ain't no geek.

 

[Clare Quilty]

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

Tabbed browsing and mouse gestures are , at this point, indispensable elements of my web browsing world--not to mention the ability to highlight and right click on any word in a page and look it up in various dictionaries, encyclopaedias, quotation books, etc.

More than anything else, I appreciate the modular extensible nature of FireFox. Rather than having a bloated shit-bag of an OS with a finite list of features (many of which one doesn't want), One can selectively add the extensions one needs without all of the excess bloat.

 

[Guest]

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).

Perdita

 

[Clare Quilty]

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).

I myself have an extraordinary weakness for the Nuyorican accent. Restricting my comments to British accents, I'm rather partial to Claygate Surrey. Anything is preferable to the Birmingham accent. I have my doubts as to whether or not Birminghamians are actually speaking English.