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Can you see the irony?
Just after 2 weeks that M$ released the Internet Explorer security makeover, Michal Zalewski came up with a highly critical exploit, as called by Secunia… based on a mishandling of the OBJECT tag….
Security alerts aggregator Secunia flagged the issue as “highly critical” and stressed that it can be exploited to corrupt memory by tricking a user into visiting a malicious Web site. “Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code,” Secunia warned.
Of course M$ didn’t just sit around… they blamed Michal Zalewski for publishing the vulnerability prior of noticing M$ so they could launch a patch [again?] for it…
Microsoft chided Zalewski for jumping the gun and posting his findings before a comprehensive patch could be created, but the researcher is unapologetic.
And how expected Zalewski striked back:
[They] often attempt to downplay threats; they don’t participate in the vulnerability research community in a meaningful way; and they routinely use false pretenses when communicating their expectations to the media (for example, expressing concern for the customer and blaming the researcher where the chief risk for the customer arises from the fact that an extremely wealthy and profitable software giant severely underfunds the task of fixing critical defects in their software)
Researchers at Websense Security Labs said there are no published proof-of-concepts demonstrating a remote code execution attack vector but made it clear that browser crash vulnerabilities often lead to remote code execution exploits.
But a quick search on SecurityFocus proved something else:
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/431796/30/30/threaded
Richard Harlos says
It just boggles my mind how incompetent Microsoft has been in their handling of security issues. I switched to the Firefox browser and am very glad that I did. Granted, I cannot access some Microsoft-technology-specific content but this, to me, is a small price to pay for speed, stability, security, etc.
I enjoy your blog, by the way; keep up the good work!
Darknet says
Richard: I agree, they are just a ruthless business, they use every dirty trick in the book (monopolising, anti-competitive behaviour, crushing or buying out any upcoming competition etc). They have never considered quality or security an important issue. I’ve been using Firefox for quite a long time and there are very few sites that I find IE specific now, you can always use IETab extension though for those rare occasions or View in IE extension.
Thanks, I’m glad you enjoy it and don’t worry, we’ll keep posting :)
Dave says
At the dizzying rate that these vulnerabilities are discovered it’s a wonder that people still make use of IE. Now, I’m not a Firefox evangelist but, c’mon folks. I’m at a loss for a clear understanding of why people don’t more off IE other than the fear of something new.