Internet technology news sites are reporting the death of Internet Explorer (IE), following Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela essentially announcing as much last week.
The Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) has revealed a critical vulnerability in Microsoft Explorer 8 (IE 8) that Microsoft was first alerted to more than 7 months ago, and never bothered to issue a patch for or to fix. Here’s the scoop, and what to do to protect yourself from the CVE-2014-1770 vulnerability.
Microsoft has been fined to the tune of $732 million by the European Union, for failing to adhere to the requirements of a settlement agreement that resulted from Microsoft’s restrictive shipping of Windows computers pre-loaded with Internet Explorer as the default web browser, and with no obvious alternative. Joaquin Almunia, competition commissioner for the European Union, noted that it had been a mistake to let Microsoft monitor their own compliance with the agreement.
A random, non-scientific survey of Internet Patrol staff members has found that people believe that Internet news sites that were taken in by the recent AptiQuant “study” finding that Internet Explorer (IE) users have a lower IQ than other browsers users, themselves have a lower IQ than other Internet news sites. “Internet Explorer Users Are Kinda Stupid, Study Suggests” exclaimed the PC World article. “Internet Explorer users ‘have below-average IQ’ ” blared The Telegraph. Business Insider and many other sites picked up the story as well.
The planned funeral for Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is not a hoax – it really is happening, tonight, in Denver, Colorado. Oh sure, it’s a spoof, but an elegant and well-planned one, to be sure, complete with prizes “for the best IE6 memory & the best dressed!” In fact, the IE 6 Funeral has gotten not just national, but even international attention, being featured in such overseas news sources as Britain’s The Register.
Firefox and IE both have site blocking (or at least, site warning) built into their current iterations. Google also does site blocking now. All do site blocking based on some metric, known only to them, that tells them that a site is more likely than not to be a malicious site, such as a phishing site, or a site loaded with spyware. The problem with site blocking browsers and site blocking search engines such as Google is that sometimes they get it wrong.
Security researchers have discovered another Windows Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). Thankfully, though the severity of this vulnerability is high, the chance of a successful exploitation is rather low. It is, however, glaringly simple for the hackers to attempt an exploit.
Thirteen year old Megan Meier committed suicide after being intentionally befriended and then dumped by someone she believed to be a new online friend named Josh Evans. In reality, Josh Evans – who said he was new to the neighborhood – turned out to be a MySpace account created by the mother of a schoolmate of Megan’s. Megan and the child had once been friends.
Wondering why your address bar (the URL bar – where you type the web address you want to visit) has turned green? Why you’re looking at a pop-up that says “Website Identification – VeriSign has identified this site as:” and “Should I trust this site?”?
The Superbowl Trojan, as some are calling it, has been implanted on dozens of Super Bowl related websites, and is installing itself on any Windows computer that happens to visit any of the Super Bowl sites without adequate protection. The Super Bowl Trojan allows the hacker to take full control over any of these infected Windows PCs by connecting the machine to dv521.com, downloading the W1C.exe file, and installing the Wow-PK Trojan.
If you are running Windows, and are connected to the Internet, chances are you have started receiving messages from your Windows system telling you that IE7 – Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 – is ready for you to download and install, to upgrade whatever version of IE you are currently using. So, should you download and install IE7? There have already been many people who have regretted installing IE7.
The new Nintendo Wii may have a funny and hard to remember name (is it the Nintendo Wii? Nintendo Wie? Nintendo Wee? Whee? Oui?), but it has managed to do what no other gamebox has done before – revolutionize game box gaming by incorporating genuine real-gesture remote control. It’s also got built in Internet wi-fi access, and Bluetooth.
Last month it was announced that Yahoo had settled the case brought against it by CheckMate Strategic Group. Whether the clickfraud at Yahoo was as bad as CheckMate alleged, if at all, Yahoo has chosen to settle the case. This week email notices went out to individuals and businesses who may be eligible to request their share of the settlement.
In case you didn’t get a notice and think that you should have – or in case you’re just curious – here is a copy of the notice.