Internet Explorer – is it really as insecure as people think?

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.

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Internet Explorer 9

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.