Computer Tips -Tech Info

Tag: internet explorer

  • Microsoft Releasing out of Cycle Patch for Internet Explorer Exploit

    Take a look at the official announcement. They’ve moved outside the usual update cycle for this one. VERY good move Microsoft to get this patch in before the holidays as it looks as though there’s been a spike in the use of this particular exploit and with people doing a lot of home pc browsing over the next two weeks, hopefully they can have a patched Internet Explorer to browse with. These are one more good reason to have an alternative browser such as firefox installed “just in case”. That’s not to say that Firefox is immune to all such security issues, but it is targeted less frequently and perhaps most importantly by DIFFERENT things than Explorer is targeted by. (I should note that version 3.0.5 of firefox is out to address it’s own list of issues.)

    By the way, this Internet Explorer vulnerability is listed as critical for Internet Explorer 5.01 on NT SP4, for Internet Explorer 6 on NT SP4 as well as pretty much every combination of Internet Explorer 6 or Explorer 7 on XP, Server 2003, Vista or Server 2008 AND those using Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 users are encouraged to update to a new release as well. In other words IF you use any currently supported version of Internet Explorer on any currently supported version of Windows you need to make sure this update installs.

  • Linux Market Share Growing Faster than Apple! | Linux adoption rate beats iPhone

    I had to find a twist like that headline above reading this article. Net Applications does a monthly survey across sites that receive 160 million visitors to gauge the “market share” of operating systems and web browsers. According to the November numbers, Microsoft Windows has no fallen below 90% market share, Mac is up to 8.87% and linux is around 0.83%. The growth rate for Mac is 7.43%, Linux growth rate is at 15.49% The iPhone is “only” growing at 12.12%

    Of course, looking at numbers from one month to the next you can see variations caused by a number of factors that may or may not accurately reflect the situation. Are people surfing more from work this month for some reason? Maybe there is a weather related reason that causes more web traffic than last month/less/etc…. Still the trends are that Windows is shrinking and NON windows use is growing…

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  • Internet Explorer Mandatory Update

    Internet Explorer 7 is going to be an automatic upgrade through WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) on February 12. This was announced last fall, but is now about to become reality. According to Microsoft there will no longer be a requirement to prove the copy of Windows installing IE7 is legitimate. Windows Genuine Validation would have prevented the install on copies of Windows that were not officially licensed. Many of those “not officially licensed” copies are pirated, but there have been problems with the reliability of Windows Genuine Validation. Some users have reported legitimate copies of Windows failing the test in the past. So how do you avoid Internet Explorer 7?

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  • Internet Explorer 7 on linux

    Haven’t had the chance to try this one firsthand yet, although I’ve been watching for this. You may be familiar with ies4linux which is a script that uses wine to download/install multiple versions of Internet Explorer on a linux install. (But why oh why would you do this?) For many that do web design it’s a tremendously good idea to test what a website looks like in multiple browsers because they all have their own unique …. quirks. Of course, there are other reasons…. sites that refuse to work with anything but IE. (Blue Cross/Blue Shield for instance has some web apps that will not work with anything else.)

    Well… now Internet Explorer 7 is supported by ies4linux….

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  • Internet Explorer 7 final release – AND first vulnerability…

    Looks as though IE 7 release is imminent and will be in automatic updates on November 1st. Here’s one persons take on the user interface “improvements”. Now, there are many improvements in core functionality, but I’m annoyed by the user interface changes. I have spent quite a while with people getting use to the way the interface for windows programs have been for the last 10 years, now I feel like many of them will take another 5-8 years to get used to a NEW way to expect programs to be laid out….

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  • Preventing the automatic update to Internet Explorer 7

    Internet Explorer 7 is set to be released this month (October 2006) and it will likely be an automatic update for Windows users either November or December of this year. (I’m thinking November.) Now, it’s been a long time in the making, at one point Microsoft said there wouldn’t be another version past 6 of IE, but… it’s finally coming and some people will not want it installed automatically until they’ve had more time to investigate it and test with their critical uses.

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  • IE7 coming within the month, Firefox 2 RC2 out as well

    It’s kind of interesting to get to do a “browser wars” kind of post where I mention a new release of two browsers coming out about the same time…. The release of IE7 is coming within weeks we are reminded by zdnet. It’s noted that it will be rolled out through automatic updates not long after it’s official release. Incidents.org is less than enthusiastic about the release suggesting that no matter how much of an improvement over IE6 this new release will be it’s bringing us features that have been in competing browsers since 1996 and diversity of browsers is a good policy.

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  • Microsoft vulnerability whack-a-mole continues…..

    Translation – Microsoft patched one vulnerability another surfaces…. Incidents.org brings us the frustrating news….

    If you remember the month of browser bugs series of exploits back in July, there was a denial of service there that appears to have code execution after all. Coincidence or not, it got publicly released after the out of cycle Microsoft patch for MSIE.

    So…. here are the possible workarounds….

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  • Internet Explorer zero-day

    This time around, the zero day is related to Internet Explorer and activex… (directanimation specifically). Incidents has a good update on the issue. This is a second exploit, there was another at the end of August, MS has an advisory on the issue. I think a safe bet would be alternative browsers until this is patched. It is possible though to enable a kill bit, or vary security settings to disable/always prompt before using activex.

  • Another Internet Explorer Exploit (September 2006)

    A new Internet Explorer bug was published on Monday. It’s been given a CVE (2006-4446) and affects IE 6.0 SP1. It’s worth considering alternative browsers. Details from bugtraq indicate that it’s a buffer overflow in the DirectAnimation.PathControl COM Object(daxctle.ocx)… could cause DoS and possibly remote code execution.