US and UK Governments Advise Avoiding Internet Explorer Until Bug Fixed 153
martiniturbide (1203660) writes "Reuters is reporting that 'The U.S. and UK governments on Monday advised computer users to consider using alternatives to Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer browser until the company fixes a security flaw that hackers used to launch attacks.' The article states that 'The Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team said in an advisory released on Monday that the vulnerability in versions 6 to 11 of Internet Explorer could lead to "the complete compromise" of an affected system.'"
Convenient timing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just in time for XP to go out of support for most people, now you get this 'well publicized' bug that wont get patched, in effect. I expect only the latest version of IE to be patched, which will NOT run on XP even if you wanted to.
Re:Don't buy garbage, or set UA header (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't buy garbage, stuff that works only in a specific version of a specific browser.
Three software products dominate a particular vertical market. When your employer chose to adopt one of these products, all three were garbage by your definition. Are you recommending that people in the affected industry resign en masse and retrain for a different industry?
90%+ plus, you can just set the user agent header in Seamonkey, Firefox, or Chrome to SAY it's IE and things work just fine.
Which works fine until an ActiveX control fails to load, or an IE-specific event listener fails to attach.
Re:Convenient timing. (Score:2, Insightful)
Care to cite any sources you have refuting this?
I was firmly under the impression XP updates are no more unless you are a huge company/government.
Source: http://windows.microsoft.com/e... [microsoft.com]
The solutions listed are: "Upgrade" to win8. Buy a new computer."
Whoops - you missed a couple:
Buy a Mac
Run Linux
Go Chrome
FTFY
I could really give a Rat's ass if Microsoft blew up every OS they had, because Microsoft is on the fast track to being the outlier, the misfit, the non standard OS.
Writing programs for specific versions of IE is just the sort of short sighted stupidity that tells us that Microsoft shills are just what we think they are - incomparably unintelligent. Did these asshats think that the web and it's technology was going to magically stop at IE 6? Unforgivible, and almost criminally stupid.
Quick now, come back with your "installed user base meme" before it becomes irrelevant. Let us all now bow before the superior Microsoft Operating system before it goes the way of Zeus or Dagon, or the idea that we should all eat shit, because all those houseflies cannot be wrong.