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Summary: Microsoft is trying again to con people into thinking that Internet Explorer is the safest browser around. It’s not. At best, it’s tied with Chrome. According to Microsoft, Chrome on Linux only gets a 2.5 for security! Microsoft has always been fond of paying analysts to say that its products are best, or having partners release reports showing how their rivals’ products are second-rate, and, now, Web sites that “show” how Internet Explorer (IE) is better than Chrome and Firefox when it comes to security. Really? Didn’t Microsoft just release yet another major Internet Explorer patch? I quote from...

Results from an online IQ test taken by over 100,000 people have been reported as indicating the users of Internet Explorer have low IQ and have provoked some IE users to threaten legal action. But the study's findings are valuable ammunition for web developers. A Canadian company that designs, validates and publishes psychometric tests for recruitment, career guidance and staff development, released its report Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Browser Usage and found itself at the centre of a storm. The survey findings were reported by Jared Newman on PC World with the headline "Internet Explorer Users Are Kinda Stupid" and...

The in-house reputation system used in Internet Explorer 8 and 9 is markedly superior at blocking social-engineering attacks than the Google equivalent used by Chrome, Firefox, Apple’s Safari, an independent test by NSS Labs has found. Rating the browsers against a sample set of European malware URLs over 19 days in April, IE 8 achieved a mean block rate of 90 percent, leaving Chrome 10, Firefox 4 and Safari 5 in the dust on 13 percent each. Opera, which uses technology from antivirus company AVG, came in last on 5 percent. When assessing IE 9 with application filtering turned on,...

As expected, Microsoft launched the Release to Market version of Internet Explorer 9 on Monday. The rollout began earlier in the day with a launch in the UK, and was heralded at an event at SXSWi in Austin, Texas. The browser will be available in 39 languages across the globe, and can be downloaded at Beautyoftheweb.com or right here in our FileForum at midnight EST March 15. "The browser is only as good as the operating system it runs on," Internet Explorer general manager Dean Hachamovich said on Monday evening's event in Austin. But with HTML5 letting the browser tap...

A new report from NSS Labs studies how various Web browsers perform when it comes to blocking socially-engineered attacks. The startling results show that Internet Explorer isn't just better than rival browsers like Chrome and Firefox--but leaves competitors completely in the dust. ... NSS Labs reviewed Internet Explorer 8 and 9, Firefox 3.6, Safari 5, Chrome 6, and Opera 10 to see how well each browser helps users recognize and avoid these attacks. Data was collected 24/7 for eleven days, with 39 discrete tests run every six hours. The testing included 636 URLs identified as potentially malicious. ... Meanwhile, Internet...

It’s common knowledge that almost every single geek hates Internet Explorer with a passion, but have you ever wondered why? Let’s take a fair look at the history and where it all began… for posterity, if nothing else.Contrary to what you might think, this article is not meant to be a hate-fest on Internet Explorer—in fact, we’re pretty impressed with the hardware acceleration and new features in Internet Explorer 9—but keep reading for the whole story. In the Beginning There Was IE, and It Was Good? We’ve all been so used to thinking of Internet Explorer as that slow, buggy...

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)’s Internet Explorer has staged a comeback in the browser war, reversing a trend of declining market share by posting two consecutive months of usage share gains against chief rivals Firefox and Chrome. For several months, Microsoft had been losing ground in the browser category. According to Web metrics firm Net Applications, Internet Explorer’s usage share numbers had been falling steadily for some time now; in September, IE had 65.71 percent of usage share last September, according to Net Applications, and had fallen all the way to 59.75 percent in May. But in both June and July, Microsoft’s browser...

Am looking for a Java Guru to explain a few Java programming issues to me.

The European Union’s uber-bureaucracy spent most of the last decade prosecuting Microsoft for monopoly abuse. While the EU could have looked to the US’s decade of Microsoft prosecution to see how pointless regulating the swift moving technology industry is, the feisty Europeans had to make their point. The EU’s complaint settled on the fact that Microsoft bundles its web browser, IE, with every copy of Windows. Never mind that every other operating system comes with a web browser too, the EU reckoned that because of Windows’ popularity, Microsoft was abusing its power by forcing IE on consumers. The EU crusade...

Microsoft said on Wednesday that it is investigating another flaw in Internet Explorer, this time a vulnerability that could result in an unauthorized disclosure of information for users running its browser on older operating systems. The software maker said in a security advisory that, although it knows of no attacks based on the flaw, the vulnerability could lead to a Web-based attack from either a Web site designed to take advantage of the flaw or from a site that becomes compromised via user-generated text or a malicious ad. Either way, a user would have to actively go to the compromised...

If you use the Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Apple Safari browsers to conduct PayPal transactions, now would be a good time to switch over to the decidedly more secure Firefox alternative. That's because a hacker on Monday published a counterfeit secure sockets layer certificate that exploits a gaping hole in a Microsoft library used by all three of those browsers. Although the certificate is fraudulent, it appears to all three to be a completely legitimate credential vouching for the online payment service. The bug was disclosed more than nine weeks ago, but Microsoft has yet to fix it. Monday's...

Swiss cheese browser gains extra hole Scallywags are using an unpatched vulnerability in an ActiveX component to distribute malware, Microsoft warned on Monday. The development adds to already pressing unresolved Internet Explorer security bug woes. No patch is available for the Office Web Components ActiveX security hole, although there are workarounds which can be automated for enterprise rollouts. The flawed component is used by IE to display Excel spreadsheets, greatly increasing the scope for mischief. Win XP and Win 2003 systems are particularly at risk, while the additional security controls in Vista cover Microsoft's modesty. Redmond said it's aware of...

The European Union charged Microsoft Corp. with new antitrust violations, reanimating a pursuit of the software giant that has already led to more than $2 billion in fines and has defined Europe's approach to policing big business. In the charges, delivered Thursday to Microsoft, the EU accuses Microsoft of "tying" its Web browser, Internet Explorer, to its Windows operating system in a move that allegedly stifles competition from other makers of browsers. The action, which revives issues at the heart of a U.S. antitrust case a decade ago, comes more than a year after Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer effectively...

Microsoft Corp. is taking the unusual step of issuing an emergency fix for a security hole in its Internet Explorer software that has exposed millions of users to having their computers taken over by hackers. The "zero-day" vulnerability, which came to light last week, allows criminals to take over victims' machines simply by steering them to infected Web sites; users don't have to download anything for their computers to get infected, which makes the flaw in Internet Explorer's programming code so dangerous. Internet Explorer is the world's most widely used Web browser. Sponsored Links (Ads by Google) Security for Your...

Excerpt - Google have announced plans to take on Microsoft and Firefox with their own open-source browser, codenamed Chrome, by releasing a specially drawn comic by Scott McCloud explaining the app. Based on the existing Webkit rendering engine, Chrome will integrate not only tab-based browsing but Google Gears and a newly integrated search and address system called Omnibox. ~ snip ~

Microsoft released a web browser on Wednesday that includes a feature that could affect the advertising model of internet rivals such as Google.

 « View all web results for SiteMeter Web Sites Using SiteMeter Are Crashing with Internet ExplorerWired News - 2 hours ago By Kim Zetter August 02, 2008 | 4:23:19 AMCategories: Glitches and Bugs A number of web sites that use SiteMeter tracking code to monitor the number of ... Attention Sitemeter Users: Your Site is DownMashable, CA - 3 hours ago Because they use SiteMeter, a popular free traffic metrics utility. As of this moment, there hasn’t been any official statement from SiteMeter via their ... SiteMeter causing blogs and websites to crash in Microsoft's ...Northwest Progressive Institute Official Blog, WA - 7 hours ago...

EU leaders tread carefully ahead of Irish treaty vote By Yacine Le Forestier AFP - Thursday, May 29 06:31 pm   European Commission Chairman Jose Manuel Barroso smiles on May 22, 2008. With a potentially perilous European treaty referendum approaching in Ireland, EU leaders are doing their utmost to avoid any sensitive issues that might encourage a "No" vote and spark a new crisis.     BRUSSELS (AFP) - With a potentially perilous European treaty referendum approaching in Ireland, EU leaders are doing their utmost to avoid any sensitive issues that might encourage a "No" vote and spark a new...

SEATTLE (AP) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) (MSFT) gave early testers their first glimpse of its next-generation Web browser Wednesday, and said Internet Explorer 8 will adhere to the same standards as competitors' programs. Microsoft's browsers, including the current Internet Explorer 7, gained notoriety among Web developers for handling Web page code differently than Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox, Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s Safari, the now-defunct Netscape Navigator and others. For the most part, major non-Microsoft browsers and outside developers who built Web pages worked with agreed-upon technical standards, while Microsoft was accused of adding proprietary code to those standards. The result: Web pages...

NEW YORK (AP) - Netscape Navigator, the world's first commercial Web browser and the launch pad of the Internet boom, will be pulled off life support Feb. 1 after a 13-year run. Its current caretakers, Time Warner Inc. (TWX)'s AOL, decided to kill further development and technical support to focus on growing the company as an advertising business. Netscape's usage dwindled with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)'s entry into the browser business, and Netscape all but faded away following the birth of its open-source cousin, Firefox. "While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting...

As is my wont, I'm going to do another of my periodic updates on the usage of Firefox by PCWorld.com visitors, as shown in our Web analytics numbers. And since 2007 is practically over, I'll expand my report to look at some other notable numbers, too. First, let's look at browsers... 2007 has seen the first full year of competition between Internet Explorer 7--Microsoft's first sorta-modern browser--and the upstart known as Firefox. IE7 has steadily grown in usage over the year, going from around 24 percent usage to 37 percent today. But despite some predictions that it would strike a...

Standards, standards, standards. That's the general theme of a video about the next version of Internet Explorer, which will unsurprisingly be called IE8. Details thus far have been scarce, but in a half-hour video with IE's GM Dean Hachamovitch and Architect Chris Wilson produced by Microsoft's Channel 9, the two discuss the importance of standards, compatibility and interoperability with the upcoming browser. We also get a (faraway) sneak peak at a development build of the new hush-hush browser. The key takeaway? IE will finally be able to render the Acid 2 test correctly, which has historically been one of the...

Hackers are actively exploiting a zero-day hole in RealNetworks’ RealPlayer media player, a software program installed on tens of millions of Windows computers worldwide. RealPlayer zero-day flaw under attack The in-the-wild attacks, which began late last night (October 18), targets a previously unknown and unpatched ActiveX vulnerability in the way RealPlayer interacts with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. The flaw is causing drive-by malware downloads when an IE user simply browsers to a maliciously rigged Web page, according to an alert issued by anti-virus vendor Symantec. The issue affects an ActiveX object installed by RealPlayer, accessible over the web using Internet...

Orange County on steroids or Phoenix raised to an exponential power? That was one reaction to Wednesday's two-year study on job creation and retention by the Milken Institute that rated the Ontario-San Bernardino-Riverside area No. 3 among 200 large U.S. metropolitan areas. The Inland Empire trailed only Ocala, Fla., and Wilmington, N.C., two metro areas in low-tax, high-growth states, and was the only California entity in the top 15. "This study shows that this area is an economic powerhouse and will remain one for the next several decades," Ontario City Manager Greg Devereaux said. "This area is Orange County from...

In a public mea culpa, Mozilla Corp.'s chief security officer acknowledged today that Firefox includes the same flaw that the company called a "critical vulnerability" in Internet Explorer during a two-week ruckus over responsibility for a Windows zero-day bug. "Over the weekend, we learned about a new scenario that identifies ways that Firefox could also be used as the entry point," said Window Snyder of Mozilla. "While browsing with Firefox, a specially crafted URL could potentially be used to send bad data to another application. "We thought this was just a problem with IE," Snyder continued. "It turns out, it...

Steve Jobs at Apple Worldwide Developers Conferences announces - 11:10 am - Safari 3 on leopard...now runs on xp/vista Live transcript: http://www.macrumorslive.com/

Vulnerable 3rd-party component used by more than two-dozen vendors. A vulnerability within a software component used in more than 70 products could allow for an attacker to remotely run malware on a targeted system. The vulnerability lies in NCTAudioFile2.dll, an ActiveX component used by Internet Explorer. An attacker could use a specially crafted web page to exploit the vulnerability and take control of a system, warned Danish security firm Secunia. The component is made by Online Media Technologies Ltd., a UK-based firm that produces .net and ActiveX components for developers. The company said its clients include AT&T, Dell, and Intel....

People may be passionate about their favorite sports team, but if you really want to get them fired up, ask what Web browser they use. There's the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" crowd who tend to stick with the browser that's included with their operating system -- Microsoft's Internet Explorer on Windows and Apple's Safari on the Mac. There are the "I've just gotta be me" folks who prefer lesser-known browsers, such as Opera from Opera Software. And there are the "live free or die" open-source true believers who champion Mozilla's Firefox above its commercial counterparts. Then there...

Microsoft on Wednesday launched the first major update to Internet Explorer in five years, and posted the new browser for Windows XP to a download site. IE 7, which has was announced in February 2005 by chairman Bill Gates, has been touted by the company as a significant update in the areas of security and usability. The interface has been streamlined and tabs have been added to compete with rivals such as Mozilla's Firefox and Opera's flagship browser. On the security front, IE 7 adds anti-phishing defenses as well as additional features to control ActiveX controls, which historically have been...

Microsoft on Tuesday broke with its regular security update schedule for only the second time this year to issue a patch for a critical Internet Explorer vulnerability that's been exploited for more than a week. MS06-055 provides a fix for the flaw in IE 5.01 and IE 6.0, Microsoft said in the accompany bulletin, and should be applied immediately. The Redmond, Wash. developer pegged the bug as "Critical," its most dire warning, for editions of IE running on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 machines. Windows Server 2003 SP1 is at slightly less risk. "An attacker who successfully...

Exploits against the unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer are increasing and attackers are gathering momentum, researchers said Thursday. They warned that the problem would become worse if cyber criminals attack via e-mail next. "It might come to nothing, but it feels like a storm's coming," said Roger Thompson, the chief technology officer at Exploit Prevention Labs. "The potential is there. Call it a storm watch, not a storm warning." At least two different exploits have appeared this week, said Thompson, one linked to the Russian-made hacker exploit kit called WebAttacker, the other posted early Thursday on the xSec gray-hat...

Miscreants are using an unpatched security bug in Internet Explorer to install malicious software from rigged Web sites, experts warned Tuesday. The vulnerability lies in the way IE 6 handles certain graphics. Malicious software can be loaded, unbeknownst to the user, onto a vulnerable Windows PC when the user clicks on a malicious link on a Web site or an e-mail message, several security companies said. "Fully patched Internet Explorer browsers are vulnerable," Ken Dunham, director of the rapid response team at VeriSign's iDefense, said in an e-mailed statement. "This new zero-day attack is trivial to reproduce and has great...

Although Microsoft has acknowledged that in-the-wild exploits are taking advantage of an unpatched flaw in Internet Explorer, the developer has not committed to cranking out a fix before next month's regularly-scheduled update on Oct. 10. Users who want to protect themselves now, however, do have options. Disable the vulnerable .dll: In the security advisory posted yesterday, Microsoft suggested that users can disable the vulnerable "Vgx.dll" from the command line. -- Click Start, choose Run, and then type -- regsvr32 -u "%ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VGX\vgx.dll -- Click OK, then click OK again in the confirmation dialog that appears. To undo the command,...

An unpatched vulnerability in all editions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is being exploited, security researchers said Tuesday, with the attack dumping a broad range of adware, spyware, and Trojans onto PCs whose users simply surf to an infected or malicious site. First reported by Sunbelt Software -- although rival Internet Security Systems claimed it was the first to discover the bug -- the vulnerability is in how IE renders VML (Vector Mark-up Language), an extension of XML that defines on-the-Web images in vector graphics format. The previously unknown -- and thus unpatched -- bug inside IE is already being...

Websense raises the alarm about a phishing Trojan that uses a new technique to cloak its activity. The Web security company said that the Trojan, which installs itself as an Internet Explorer helper object, waits for the user to enter information in specific Web site forms -- particularly online banking sites -- then zaps the stolen data back to the attacker. What's unique about the new Trojan, said Websense, is that it delivers that data via ICMP packets. Keylogging Trojans usually transmit purloined usernames and passwords via e-mail or a HTTP POST command. Both can be easily spotted. "Instead, this...

In a recent blog posting , Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) Lead Program Manager Chris Wilson revealed many of the technical improvements that Microsoft will add to IE 7.0 for its final release. Almost all the improvements are related to bugs in IE's implementation of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), an HTML-like technology that Web developers use to create Web sites. Many of these bugs aren't fixed in the currently available IE 7.0 Beta 1 release, Wilson noted. Wilson's post raises some serious questions about IE 7.0, not the least of which is this: If IE 7.0 Beta 1 doesn't include the...

After a brief period of little growth this spring, The Mozilla Foundation’s open-source Firefox Web browser is again gaining ground on Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer (IE). In its latest study on Web browser usage, Netherlands-based OneStat.com said Sunday that Firefox gained 1.14 percent in June and is now used by 12.93 percent of surfers. That’s up from 11.79 percent who used Firefox in May, while IE use declined by 2.12 percent to 83.05 percent. “We thought that Firefox growth had slowed down,” said Niels Brinkman, a co-founder of OneStat.com. “It seems it’s increasing again. That’s a little bit of a...

Multiple security organizations warned Tuesday that Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, and SeaMonkey -- on Windows, Linux, and the Mac -- are vulnerable to a JavaScript bug that could allow a determined attacker to dupe users into giving up sensitive personal information such as credit card or bank account numbers and passwords. According to Symantec, which issued an alert late afternoon Tuesday, all versions of the Microsoft and Mozilla browsers could be used to harvest data through a JavaScript key-filtering vulnerability. "This issue is triggered by utilizing JavaScript 'OnKeyDown' events to capture and duplicate keystrokes from users," went the Symantec warning....

Researchers have identified an "insidious" threat affecting Yahoo Messenger. A self-propagating worm, named yhoo32.explr, installs a piece of software called 'Safety Browser' and then hijacks the Internet Explorer homepage, leading users to a site that puts spyware on their PCs. Because Safety Browser uses the IE icon to identify itself, users can easily mistake it for the legitimate Internet Explorer. This is the first recorded incidence of malware installing its own web browser on a PC without the user's permission, according to security firm FaceTime. The self-propagating worm spreads the infection to all contacts in Yahoo! Messenger by sending a...

Despite all the hoopla about the introduction of Windows Vista, the truth of the matter is that the new OS isn't due for at least another seven to nine months — and it will probably be even longer before most of us start adopting it. Meanwhile, we've still got to deal with Win XP. In order to make the waiting easier, we've decided to assemble the greatest tips in the history of Windows XP. Here you'll find the tips that give you the most bang for your buck; that are most useful in terms of security, functionality, and PC performance;...

Last month, security researcher HD Moore decided to write a simple program that would mangle the code found in web pages and gauge the effect such data would have on the major browsers. The result: hundreds of crashes and the discovery of several dozen flaws. The technique - called packet, or data, fuzzing - is frequently used to find flaws in network applications. Moore and others are now turning the tool on browsers to startling results. In a few weeks, the researcher had found hundreds of ways to crash Internet Explorer and, to a lesser extent, other browsers. In another...

Mozilla.org's open-source Firefox browser has grabbed 10 percent of the Web browser market. Data released yesterday by Web audience-measurement firm NetApplications.com show that just over 10 percent of users use the Firefox browser, up almost 2.5 percent from from February. Microsoft's Internet Explorer led all browsers with 84.7 percent of users in March, while Apple's Safari browser was third with 3.2 percent. Computerworld reports that "in the past year, Firefox has gained 3.3 percent share while introducing Version 1.5 of the browser with improved features. Internet Explorer has lost 3.9 percent as users wait for Internet Explorer 7, which boasts...

People are being warned about spam e-mails containing BBC News stories designed to trick them into visiting malicious websites. Cyber criminals are using the messages to exploit a recently discovered flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. If users click on the link, they are taken to a fake website that installs a piece of software that can monitor online financial activity. People who receive the e-mails are advised to not follow the link. The alert, from security firm Websense, comes less than a week after security firms found three flaws in the popular browser. Spoof sites The new threat takes advantage...

A developers' version of Firefox 2.0 targeted for release Tuesday evening aims to test the back-end infrastructure supporting the browser's new bookmarks, or Places, functionality. Firefox 2.0 Bon Echo Alpha 1, designed to serve as a developer's and tester's preview, focuses on improving access and ease of use for Web site history and bookmarks, according to the Mozilla wiki. The Places functionality aims to consolidate user data formats, as well as improve the capabilities of Live Bookmarks. "The BonEcho Alpha 1 milestone is the first of many developer milestones on the path to Firefox 2," Mike Schroepfer, vice president of...

Microsoft plans to take the wraps off Internet Explorer 7 on Tuesday, releasing the new "preview" version of its Web browser to the general public for testing. The program, still a work in progress, will be available shortly for download from the Internet Explorer section of Microsoft's corporate Web site, the company said. The company, which began limited testing in July, had promised to deliver a public beta by the end of March. "The big update is that it's public," said Margaret Cobb, group product manager for Internet Explorer at Microsoft. "All previous releases were limited." The latest version works...

The minority of Mac users still browsing with Internet Explorer need to consider moving to another browser very quickly, as Microsoft plans to discontinue support for IE beginning Dec. 31. The news, which came in a statement on Friday, may not have come as a complete surprise to Mac users: Microsoft announced back in June 2003 that it was ending Mac support for IE. Microsoft has not upgraded the software in three years, leaving IE 5--rather than version 6, which is available for Windows--as the most recent version available to Mac users. While IE for Mac will continue to be...

Before all you anti-MS fanboys attack my setup let me first say I am an ASP/VB web developer for an online company and require IE and MS so save the firefox/mac posts for another day. On to the problem at hand... I got the automatic update last night on my XP pro system and now my IE acts very odd. It seems to open fine but it always opens a new window no matter how I try (ie. type in an addres, using favorites). The original window stays open but it doesnt allow any interaction with it. If I try...

Google was so concerned that a flaw in Microsoft's IE browser might compromise its toolbar technology it managed to fixed it within a few days of finding out about the problem. Microsoft, on the other hand, has known about the problem for six months and is promising that a patch might be available next Tuesday, possibly, maybe.

A security researcher in Israel has found a way to steal information from unwitting users of Google's desktop search tool by exploiting an unpatched flaw in Microsoft's ubiquitous Internet Explorer. There is a bug in the way the Web browser processes CSS rules, Matan Gillon wrote in a description of his hack posted on Wednesday. CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a method for setting common styles across multiple Web pages. The Web design technique is widely used on many sites across the Internet.

Two new pieces of computer code that could be used in cyberattacks on Windows users were posted on the Web on Wednesday and Thursday. The exploit posted Thursday is another that could allow a remote attacker to gain complete control over a vulnerable computer. The code takes advantage of a flaw in a Windows component for transaction processing, called the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator. Microsoft addressed the flaw in security bulletin MS05-051 in October.