German government urges public to stop using Internet Explorer

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/18/us-microsoft-browser-idUSBRE88G1CA20120918

by _ikke_ • 14 years ago

220 52 14 years ago

webcache.googleusercontent.com

kodisha• 14 years ago

Yurop FTW [1]

http://a3.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/118/08c0bd6f757b...

zeteo• 14 years ago

Temporarily, pending a bug fix.

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

Does Windows 8 even give you a choice if you are on ARM?

mtgx• 14 years ago

Nope.

legulere• 14 years ago

If it won't Microsoft will pay a fine again to the EU.

dangrossman3• 14 years ago

Microsoft was deemed to have a monopoly in "Intel-compatible PC operating systems". An ARM tablet is not in this market; Microsoft has no monopoly in this market; Microsoft cannot be fined for abusing monopoly power in this market as it does not have monopoly power. They are free as Apple or Android to allow or disallow software on that platform.

IANAL.

ville• 14 years ago

I thought it only did not allow other browsers to do JIT compiling, whereas Apple is the one who does not allow competing browsers at all on ARM (iOS).

rbanffy6• 14 years ago

> it only did not allow other browsers to do JIT compiling

Effectively preventing competitors from building accepctable JavaScript-enabled browsers. It's not that you can't make a winrt browser. It's that it'll suck.

DeepDuh• 14 years ago

Apple doesn't allow anything other than their provided Webkit rendering engine for interpreting websites, in extension to not allowing any third party interpreters in general. They do now allow others to repackage Webkit into their browser apps, which Google has done with Chrome - albeit like with Win8@ARM they can't do JIT then. So it's not all that different actually, the outcome for the user is about the same.

buster• 14 years ago

What Windows ARM browsers are there as alternative anyway?

polshaw• 14 years ago

Well, i'm not aware of it existing on 'windows rt' (no one has it for starters), but firefox works on both linux ARM and windows x86, so i'm sure that could be ported without too much trouble.

DasIch2• 14 years ago

They do that every time such a bug occurs, hardly worth a news report.

philippK• 14 years ago

Yeah well this has been all over the primetime news shows on german television. They all aired with the warning to not use IE / switch to a different browswr.

While this might not mean much to the average user of HN (read: tech literate) - i think it IS quite a big deal for "ordinary" computer users.

I think such warnings, from an official government body no less, will be heeded by many who don't know much and "just want to be safe"

Meanwhile MS choses to tell people that it "is not that bad" and that "not many users will be affected" and no word on when a patch is coming. This despite the fact that all current MS OSes (xp,vista,7) are exposed - is a PR disaster for MS.

DasIch2• 14 years ago

Obviously MS is downplaying it but on the other side the BSI creates a huge stir to create the image that it is useful in someway and to avoid becoming an obscure agency that is mentioned only in passing in a couple of tech news articles. That's not to say that what they are doing is bad it's just that their are two sides and the ordinary computer user probably has still no idea what's going on.

rbellio• 14 years ago

But it's MICROSOFT! sigh

My job routinely requires me to utilize Internet Explorer, and I don't think it's all that bad to be honest. I also utilize Chrome and Firefox throughout my day. Is it a little slower? Sure. Is it kind of the big, ugly older sister of Firefox and Chrome? Absolutely. Beyond all that, though, it still works.

sidcool• 14 years ago

Till the bug is fixed. No sensation here. Move on.

dpearson2• 14 years ago

Simply switching to another browser isn't a panacea; Chrome, Firefox, and Opera all have the benefit (currently) of not commanding the same market share as IE except for recently. If IE stays behind Chrome for a while (and if other browsers' share keeps increasing), these other browsers will be targeted more, as it would be more economically worthwhile. While they are an improvement over IE in the security department, it will nevertheless be interesting to see if malware authors can have success against Chrome, Firefox, and company.

alanh• 14 years ago

Actually, there are now more Chrome users than IE users (depending on which country you are dealing with). German users have been huge Firefox users since 2005. And the Webkit supergroup (add all the Safari, iOS, and Android browsers to Chrome) means even more of the market than you might think are using essentially “the same” browser engine.

(Quotes because, as PPK always reminds us, there is no monolithic WebKit in actuality.)

Edit in reply: Hmm, “currently… except for recently.” Then let my comment be in reply to “currently” and not “recently,” I suppose. Not sure if my parent was edited after my reply, or if I was really that bad a reader.

scotth• 14 years ago

I think you should read GP's comment more carefully.

dpearson2• 14 years ago

No, I'm just that bad of a writer. It wasn't edited, but was a complete mess to begin with.

luriel2• 14 years ago

Also with things like WebGL security is only going to become a bigger problem.

Yes, they fix and push fixes out faster, but that doesn't inherently mean your browser is more secure, only that there are less people out there with browsers that are publicly known to be exploitable, but is safe to assume that all browsers are exploitable, and that there are people that knows the holes but doesn't make them public because their value (either to governments or criminals) is way too great to even compete in the same league as the rewards offered by browser makers.

azakai4• 14 years ago

> Also with things like WebGL security is only going to become a bigger problem.

Please don't repeat FUD.

azakai4• 14 years ago

> it will nevertheless be interesting to see if malware authors can have success against Chrome, Firefox, and company.

We already know the answer to that - when attackers try to target any browser, they in many cases succeed. All major browsers get hacked at the relevant competitions, and those are just the public hacks we hear about, the private ones are likely far worse.

Mitigation measures do matter though. Adding security makes it harder, and pushing out patches quickly reduces the window of vulnerability. Microsoft has improved in the former but not in the latter.

joedoe55555• 14 years ago

Agree, I know two people that got owned in the last year, both were using - outdated - Firefox browsers on XP.

rbanffy6• 14 years ago

> Simply switching to another browser isn't a panacea;

That's one of the reasons I simply avoid Windows.

VMG• 14 years ago

At least chrome offers bounties for people who find bugs

ZoFreX• 14 years ago

I find it amusing that geeks worry so much about browsers and the security of them at a software level, when every computer I've repaired in recent memory was owned by user stupidity (I would call it social engineering, but smiley packs and .jpg.exe's are hardly advanced trickery). All browsers, IE included, are pretty damn secure these days. People's brains? Not so much.

001sky• 14 years ago

The free security tool, which is known as the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit, or EMET, is available through an advisory on Microsoft's website: blogs.technet.com/b /msrc/

the "Enhanced Mitigation Experience" = priceless

ktizo• 14 years ago

It sounds like some new form of militarised disaster ride from a North Korean theme park.

rbanffy6• 14 years ago

I thought EMET is something you write on a golem's forehead...

m_for_monkey• 14 years ago

Yes, this is the truth.

scotty79• 14 years ago

That's a good name for a Culture ship from Iain M. Banks novels.

antimora• 14 years ago

  On Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 operating systems, the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 must be installed for EMET to work. There are no other special requirements for any other supported version of Windows.

And in order to have it one needs to install .NET which comes with bunch of its requirements.

madmaze• 14 years ago

Page no longer available. here is it from google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.reu...

aneth4• 14 years ago

The fact the article disappeared interests me more than its content. How does Reuters go about deciding which articles to delete, as opposed to merely retracting or modifying? Is this an excercise in journalistic integrity, corporate bullying, ...?

s_henry_paulson• 14 years ago

To be fair the headline and article is a bit over dramatic.

rbanffy6• 14 years ago

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/18/net-us-microsoft-b...

sxsde• 14 years ago

Also available on german: https://www.bsi.bund.de/ContentBSI/Presse/Pressemitteilungen...

vevillas• 14 years ago

Well, I was in Germany in 2010, working in a Govt office. Searching to get authorized a different browser, i found that the govt recommended to avoid use of ie.

German government urges public to stop using Internet Explorer

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