Archive for category Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer – is it really as insecure as people think?
Posted by Anthony in Internet Explorer, Security, Windows on September 15, 2010
Firstly, I have to say I don’t think IE is at all insecure. That’s not because it’s never had a virus, but because browsers can’t have feelings. Insecure just makes a good catchphrase I think, even though I used the word incorrectly.
I stumbled on this blog post today Internet Explorer 8 Still the Best at Staying Safe While Browsing the Web. IE added a feature a while back that checks the website being requested (the URL / URI) against a known database before it loads that in the browser. According to the website above that feature caused 560 million blocks last year or 3 million blocks a day, so it prevents people from getting a virus 3 million times a day. That’s pretty impressive.
Now, that’s not exactly the cure I have to say. Blocking websites that gives IE virus’ is not a patch to permanently prevent a virus. The cure is to fix their code, however being realistic, the site blocking feature is just another layer of security. You can’t catch all the bugs all the time and a feature like this adequately allows the IE team time to develop a fix and still prevent any given site from causing the entire internet turning into a botnet.
Kudos to you MS for providing such a feature, though do be sure to keep the patches coming.
Internet Explorer 9
Posted by Anthony in Internet Explorer, Windows on September 15, 2010
Internet Explorer 9 is looking pretty promising, and apparently something is being released today. Unfortunately I can’t check it out as all of my machines are running WinXP.
/sigh
IE 9 is set to only run on Windows Vista and newer OS’. It’s time for a new machine!
Here are some more detailed specs as to what has changed in IE 9.
I also stumbled on this today, the official Microsoft Internet Explorer WordPress blog.