{"id":1554,"date":"2008-12-17T08:49:14","date_gmt":"2008-12-17T13:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/?p=1554"},"modified":"2008-12-18T10:44:31","modified_gmt":"2008-12-18T15:44:31","slug":"nows-the-time-to-switch-to-firefox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/12\/17\/nows-the-time-to-switch-to-firefox\/","title":{"rendered":"Now’s the time to switch to Firefox"},"content":{"rendered":"

A serious security flaw has been found in Internet Explorer – no big surprise there. But this one really IS serious – it was found by attackers before it was found by Microsoft. So exploits are already out there “in the wild.” (This BBC News story has more details<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The worst part of it is that you could be hit by this exploit just by visiting a “normal” site that’s been infected – being vigilant isn’t enough anymore.<\/p>\n

“In this case, hackers found the hole before Microsoft did,” said Rick Ferguson, senior security advisor at Trend Micro. “This is never a good thing.”<\/p>\n

As many as 10,000 websites have been compromised since the vulnerability was discovered, he said.<\/p>\n

“What we’ve seen from the exploit so far is it stealing game passwords, but it’s inevitable that it will be adapted by criminals,” he said. “It’s just a question of modifying the payload the trojan installs.”<\/p>\n

Said Mr Ferguson: “If users can find an alternative browser, then that’s good mitigation against the threat.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The flaw affects even IE7, the latest (released) version of Internet Explorer – so this isn’t just a flaw in older versions of the program.<\/p>\n

So if you’ve been dragging your feet over changing to a different browser, now’s a better time than ever to switch! I’d recommend Firefox<\/a>, but any alternate browser (such as Opera<\/a>, Apple’s Safari<\/a>, or Google’s Chrome<\/a>) would do to keep you safe.<\/p>\n

UPDATE (12\/18\/2008):<\/strong> Microsoft released a fix for this<\/a> yesterday – it’s available through the normal Windows Update. Just be aware that you’ll have to reboot your computer (which seems silly for a fix to your browser, but that’s an argument for another day).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A serious security flaw has been found in Internet Explorer – no big surprise there. But this one really IS serious – it was found by attackers before it was found by Microsoft. So exploits are already out there “in the wild.” (This BBC News story has more details.) The worst part of it is… Continue reading Now’s the time to switch to Firefox<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[35,62,26,97,36],"class_list":["post-1554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-internet","tag-microsoft","tag-security","tag-software","tag-web","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-p4","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":346,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2004\/12\/09\/secunia-multiple-browsers-window-injection-vulnerability-test\/","url_meta":{"origin":1554,"position":0},"title":"Secunia – Multiple Browsers Window Injection Vulnerability Test","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 9, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a serious one here, folks. Even in my secure Firefox browser, the exploit works (that is, a pop up window that I opened by clicking on a link did indeed open the Secunia page rather than the Citibank page that was supposed to open).","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1026,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/01\/14\/im-sorry-but-windows-vista-still-seems-too-slow\/","url_meta":{"origin":1554,"position":1},"title":"I’m Sorry, but Windows Vista still seems too slow","author":"Keith Survell","date":"January 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I was downloading a file in Windows Vista today - I would say it was a \"medium-sized\" file that took no time at all on my super-fast cable modem connection to download. However, once it was done, this popped up: This new dialog took longer to calculate the time remaining\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1027,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/01\/16\/bad-user-experience\/","url_meta":{"origin":1554,"position":2},"title":"Bad User Experience","author":"Keith Survell","date":"January 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"You may have heard of this new-fangled thing from Microsoft called Silverlight. Well, I decided to take a look at it the other day, and when I tried to install it, I was greeted with this unfriendly screen: Well, actually it's not very unfriendly, but it certainly was unhelpful. Why\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":442,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/03\/21\/guide-microsoft-european-draft-licence\/","url_meta":{"origin":1554,"position":3},"title":"Guide: Microsoft European draft licence","author":"Keith Survell","date":"March 21, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Read through this Q&A style article (there's 3 pages of it). Good grief Microsoft sucks!","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":265,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2004\/10\/12\/microsoft-warns-of-22-new-security-flaws\/","url_meta":{"origin":1554,"position":4},"title":"Microsoft warns of 22 new security flaws","author":"Keith Survell","date":"October 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Just another example of why you should use non-Microsoft products where ever you can. And since IE is the biggest culprit of these security flaws, why not give Firefox a try?","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":547,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/06\/16\/microsoft-asks-for-help-from-hackers\/","url_meta":{"origin":1554,"position":5},"title":"Microsoft asks for help from hackers","author":"Keith Survell","date":"June 16, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"This is actually quite refreshing, in a way. It's good to see them trying to drive the point of security home to their programmers & executives. Who knows? Maybe Windows really will become more secure.","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}