Tag: internet explorer

Goodbye, Microsoft Internet Exploder (sic)

Posted on March 17, 2015 by - News

windows-10-technical-preview-turquoiseIt’s fair to say that Microsoft’s browser – Internet Explorer – has not been the favourite browser in the world.

But Microsoft has now confirmed that it will put IE in the background when it releases Windows 10 – that’s not until autumn this year.

Instead of pushing Internet Explorer – which has landed it in a lot of bother with government regulatory authorities, Microsoft is to produce a leaner meaner browser which is codenamed Spartan.

Microsoft got into trouble with different governments because IE was bundled with its operating system.

According to web site the Verge, Microsoft won’t kill off Internet Explorer completely but will supplement it with Spartan.

People got so fed up with Internet Explorer in the past that many opted for alternative browsers such as Opera or Firefox.

Microsoft is eager to show that under the stewardship of newly fledged CEO Satya Nadella, things ain’t what they used to be.

Although there’s no official launch date for Windows 10, the perception in the supply chain is that if it comes out before autumn, it will be something of a miracle.

Patch that Flash!

Posted on January 23, 2015 by - News

wargames-hackerSoftware company Adobe released a security bulletin that patches its Flash Player.
The updates apply to Windows, to the Macintosh, and to the Linux operating system.
The security bulletin said that Adobe is aware of an exploit used in attacks against older versions of the Flash player.
Affected software includes the Flash Player Desktop Runtime, Flash Player for Linux, Flash Player for Google Chrome, and Flash Player for Internet Explorer 10 and Internet Explorer 11.
You can find details of what you need to do by going to this page. The patch itself won’t be available until next week, it seems.

Internet Explorer still popular, shock

Posted on October 2, 2014 by - News

shockData gathered by Net Applications has revealed that despite the domination of press by its rivals, Microsoft Internet Explorer is still the world’s most popular browser.

Microsoft’s product accounts for almost 60 percent of the market and it does not appear to be going away anytime soon.

Chrome, which is IE’s main rival, has been expanding its reach and has grown to 21 percent up from 19 percent just a month earlier. That growth has mainly been at the expense of Firefox, which now accounts for only 14 percent, down from around 20 per cent a year earlier. Finally, Safari is holding steady at the five percent mark while other browsers are also slowly declining in usage.

Internet Explorer IE 8, which is the default browser in Windows 7, has slowly gained users and now accounts for over 22 percent of the market.

Newer versions of the browser, such as 10 and 11 have declined in numbers. IE 11, the current browser version only accounts for 17 percent.

As Internet Explorer 12 coming as part of Windows 10, formerly known as Windows 9, Microsoft may soon find itself in a situation where it’s desperately trying to get its users to upgrade.

Also it is telling that the impact of mobile browser use is negligible – both Apple and Chrome do not seem to benefit much from a “mobile effect” on the figures.

 

IE is back to being Internet Exploder

Posted on July 25, 2014 by - News

rage-explosionAfter years of keeping its security flaws down in its Internet Explorer range, Microsoft appears to be under siege from malware writers.

Bromium Labs analysed public vulnerabilities and exploits from the first six months of 2014. The research determined that Internet Explorer vulnerabilities have increased more than 100 percent since 2013.

This makes IE worse than Java and Flash for vulnerabilities.

It does not appear to be Microsoft’s fault. Hackers had been increasingly targeting Internet Explorer and Vole had responded by a progressively shorter time to first patch for its past two releases.

In contrast, the number of Java zero-days have declined and in the first six months of 2014, there has not been a single public Java exploit.

Bromium thinks that so much attention was paid to JAVA exploits in 2013 and countermeasures such as disabling Java may have had a role in forcing attackers to switch to new targets this year. This resulted in a drop in Java being targeted generally.

The hackers have been using Action Script Spray which is an emerging technique that bypasses address space layout randomisation (ASLR) with a return-oriented program (ROP) chain.

Rahul Kashyap, chief security architect, at Bromium said web browsers have always been a favourite avenue of attack, but hackers are not only getting better at attacking Internet Explorer, they are doing it more frequently.

He said that Action Script Sprays are a new technique and similar techniques will start to appear in the months to come. This is further evidence that the world of Web browser plugins presents a weak link that is just waiting for exploitation.

Web browser release cycles are compressing and the interval between the general availability of a new release and the appearance of the first security patches has been decreasing recently, he noted.

“This may represent greater efforts on the part of software manufacturers to secure their products, or it may represent products being released to market with less security testing than earlier versions received,” Kashyap said.