France has echoed calls by the German government for web users to find an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) to protect security.
Certa, a government agency that oversees cyber threats, warned against using all versions of the web browser.
Microsoft told BBC News that IE8 was the "most secure browser on the market" and people should upgrade.
Cliff Evans, head of security and privacy, said that so far the firm had only seen malicious code that targeted the older version of its browser, IE6.
Microsoft: upgrade to IE8, even though it's vulnerable
Microsoft is advising its customers to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 - even though the latest version of its browser is vulnerable to a serious security attack.
The software giant issued a statement urging people to upgrade their browser, after the zero-day exploit that was used to attack companies such as Google went public.
Internet Explorer vulnerable on Windows 7
So it seems that an Internet Explorer zero day vulnerability allowed the back door to be opened that resulted in the hack attack on Google and many others that has received such publicity this week.
This terrible piece of PR for Microsoft comes just as the IE browser which had almost total control of the market starts to come under pressure - not just from the open-source Mozilla Firefox, but from Google's Chrome.
British government ignores MS browser fears
France and Germany have already told their citizens to avoid Microsoft's Internet Explorer because of a critical hole in the browser, so what does the British government think?
[...]
Microsoft confirmed that the hole was used in the attacks against Google and 33 other companies believed to come from China.
The latest attacks on Google have made it clear. Internet Explorer is a set of security holes masquerading as a Web browser. Get rid of it. Now.
I've written it many times before: Nobody is more generous with support lifecycles than Microsoft. Operating system security updates are provided for about 10 years. Are Linux or Mac OS versions from 10 years ago still being updated? The answer is no, and not for a long time.
Combine this with a couple of side-policies of Microsoft's: They don't issue new browsers with OS service packs and they support the browser that comes with the operating system and the implication is that browsers also get supported for about 10 years. The technical term for this is "Nearly Unlimited Technical Support" or NUTS.
And it's not just browsers. Because Windows 2000 is still supported, so is Outlook Express 5.5 (possibly 5.01 as well, I can't quite confirm it).
Comments
Needs Sunlight
2010-01-19 14:41:35
Roy Schestowitz
2010-01-19 15:41:19
your_friend
2010-01-19 16:51:15
If you look at what Microsoft actually spends, their support boils down to technical and legal efforts to keep their user community out of the source code ("helpless and divided" in FSF parlance), and hyping the resultant stale code. Part of the effort to keep others out is sabotage of "competitor's products", all those things that make Windows do anything. These are peculiar failures of non free software. Advice to fix the mess comes at $50/hour.
NotZed
2010-01-20 01:56:53
"Free software does not have these problems."
Precisely why Linus' 'its ok by me to use binary drivers', Ubuntu (we're in a popularity contest, not here to free the world) and moonblight are so dangerous. They're ensuring 'open source' will have those problems.
your_friend
2010-01-20 06:47:37
The second article spins good browser behavior as non standard. They idiotically call "commands in metadata" and other advert friendly garbage "web standards" and blames Chrome and Safari for not working with user hostile sites. It's as if they did not hear Murdoch promise to help Microsoft out with their slog against free software and Google.
No, the stupid sites only work with Windows or cutting edge free software. Most users are not willing to download new browsers every six months, so the ultimatum is clear - use a flawed and dangerous browser on top of an even more dangerous OS or you don't get a bunch of "mainstream" websites. It's easy to see which side is going to lose and it's not iPhone or GNU/Linux. Turning customers away is always a losing proposition and insulting them on the way out is a good way to be sure they never come back.
Roy Schestowitz
2010-01-20 10:45:52
your_friend
2010-01-21 06:23:56