Governments Say No To IE!
Following recent reports that China allegedly attacked Google to gain sensitive information in the form of emails of human rights activists, it has been reported that this was due to a severe security issue and weakness within IE6. It is believed that a Trojan can be planted within your computer using IE6, which then can monitor your screen and obviously gain sensitive information such as bank details.
Since this revelation the German government has decided to warn its web users to find an alternative to Internet Explorer (not just IE6 but to avoid IE entirely) and has started, what could be a serious dent to the popularity of Microsoft for the average web user leaving other browsers such as Firefox, Safari and Google chrome to compensate from the outcome.
Governments providing warnings to not use products such as internet explorer are unprecedented and with now France and Australia also taking the same stance as Germany this clearly shows the problem is one that can not be ignored.
While Microsoft were aware of the warning, they believe there is no significant threat to general users and that they do not support the warning however Graham Cluley of anti-virus firm Sophos, told BBC News that not only did the warning apply to Internet Explorer Version 6, 7 and 8, but the instructions on how to exploit the flaw had been posted on the internet.
Microsoft are now believed to be working on fixing the problem within their browser however this is no small task as they have to ensure no other loop holes are created by this new fix and that it also is still freely available to all computers.
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Posted By: Martyn
Hi, I'm Martyn, the Lead Designer for Web Design GM and really hope you find my existing and upcoming articles useful. Please leave comments below and I will try to respond to any questions as soon as possible.
