Michael Dickopf, spokesman for the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), has told the Berliner Zeitung that internet users should switch from Internet Explorer to Mozilla or Opera. Dickopf says Internet Explorer is hazard-prone, attracting too many viruses and worms. BSI already uses a combination of alternative browsers, Dickopf told the paper. Dickopf's comments are bad news for Microsoft. BSI is the central IT security service provider for the German government. Its recommendations are usually taken extremely seriously.
The Federation of German Consumer Organisations (Vzbv), a non-governmental organisation acting as an umbrella for 38 German consumer associations, also warns users to be careful when using Internet Explorer. Online banking scams and identity theft are proliferating in Germany due to security exploits in Microsoft’s browser or in its email client Outlook (Express). Recently, several customers of Dresdner Bank have fallen victim to a Trojan horse program, which snatched their banking passports.
View: The full story
News source: The Reg
The Federation of German Consumer Organisations (Vzbv), a non-governmental organisation acting as an umbrella for 38 German consumer associations, also warns users to be careful when using Internet Explorer. Online banking scams and identity theft are proliferating in Germany due to security exploits in Microsoft’s browser or in its email client Outlook (Express). Recently, several customers of Dresdner Bank have fallen victim to a Trojan horse program, which snatched their banking passports.
View: The full story News source: The Reg
What's New in v0.55 - 2004.9.9
GUI Improved / Fixed
- torrrent maker can auto-detect the best piece-size now
- do not check version for more than once in one day
- tray icon shows up when change the lock of the tray area
- fix possible crash when closing
- the issue of adding task by command line do nothing
- may crash in spliter
Core Improved / Fixed
- add auto stop task when share ratio reach specfic value, auto shut down the computer
- improve the efficient of NAT passthrough (imcompatiable with 0.53)
- add Max Simultaneous TCP connection attempts to option, better works with XP SP2
- fix the issue that min seeding rate also applies to download task
- move on to next tracker slowly if no peers returned.
- fix the issue that it will not stop connecting to tracker after tast stopped
- may crash because of thread conflict when writing the edge of files
- may crash when exit while having queued tasks
- may crash when caculate the rate(Thanks the crash report by trudy)
- some crash caused by overflow (Thanks the crash report by Huang Kan)
- fix too short timeout disconnect issue with AZ and Official Seed
I wonder who's next...
wales very gets mentioned
There have been lots of security flaws reported in mozilla recently, therefore i fail to see how it has been proven that mozilla is flawless. I use IE most of the time and Mozilla some of the time.
Incidently all the non-geekly people who installed mozilla at the time when the US government first said they should are now exposed to the LibPNG Graphics Library Remote Buffer Overflow Exploit
I mean with IE flaws we all get to know about them, with mozilla flaws they are very under reported
Hmm... But this is a fixed bug right?
From both spoof pages, I just get error messages like:
Location: http://www.nd.edu/~jsmith30/xul/test/browser2.xul
Line Number 231, Column 35:ą쀈ƒ֨׻
----------------------------------^
Anyway, Fx bugs are underreported since the browser isn't very common.
IE bugs are more important to know about due to the amount of users affected by them.
Yes, but just like with IE, you should upgrade your browser when updates are available. This one was also fixed. The difference that's usually seen (and I speak from own experience) with Firefox isn't that exploits don't exist -- they certainly do -- but that exploits are more quickly fixed.
Speaking of PNG, I really hope they make IE 7 support alpha transparency without using DirectX filter tricks.
Last edited by 21023 on 13 Sep 2004 - 14:15
The point was if i had followed the advice of the US government when the said my computer could have been taken over by looking at a doggy .PNG.
I heard that usage was at 14% which is pretty high. Most people don't like updating software, especially if they never hear about the reason why !
Opera, the browser that's SO secure, it can't even connect to the internet!
FFM
I'm not slagging Opera off, I was just gobsmacked that it couldn't detect my router, let alone traverse my NAT!
IE autoconfigures for it, Mozilla autoconfigures for it, Firefox autoconfigures for it, Hell... even Netscape autoconfigures for it. Opera won't even manually configure let alone automatically!
FFM
as for phishing, it really surprises me that people can fall for such poor attempts at pretending to be banks. I suspect the same people would willingly hand over credit card details if someone pretending to be from the bank called them up on their mobile.
lol, are you saying there are unusually many hackers in Germany? Why do you think that?
You're probably very right there. My mum works in the local supermarket and as the UK is rolling out this Chip & PIN thing on bank cards etc she has to start asking people if they know their PIN number or something. It's amazing the reactions she gets. Some people say "Yes but you're not having it!!" while others will just give her their PIN. Considering the amount of access she has to those cards she could easily do quite a bit of damage, methinks.
People are idiots *sigh*
(PS: I still use IE. Hack me. I dare you.)
I somehow doubt they were unusual too. Sounds like a nasty case of German-jitter
All outbound messages would be signed as coming from the company - and all inbound messages would be verified as well - without having to roll-out and configure S/MIME on every users machine and issue them each with a digital ID.
Best of all, this would enable encrypted communications with your service providers. They could email passwords, account balances, account numbers, etc. Currently most organizations mail or phone such information after a cursory check like "what was the amount of your last deposit?"
Such questions are easy to defeat. Anyone with an account number can make a deposit - so all you have to do is deposit $1 into the account and when they ask the question, the perp can answer confidently. And you don't need any ID to deposit funds into someone's account, so it could be done anonymously.
At least with S/MIME you know who you are talking to.
I agree... security is OBVIOUSLY dependant upon the number of people that use a product, rather than the developers and security philosophy.
Do people not get bored of dragging out that response everytime Firefox is mentioned??
Does that mean all cars are equally safe and that only the number of owners affects the crash rate? Does that mean that all padlocks are just as secure as each other and it is only the number of users that affects how many are broken into?
Care to spread anymore crap? I'm not saying that Firefox is never cracked or is perfectly secure - but arguing that it would suddenly turn to crap when people start using it ISN'T a very sound arguement.
Oh, but for the joys of reading - - - WITH COMPREHENSION! I'm not gonna re-quote Ironmans statement, you've already done that, and it didn't seem to stick. He didn't say anything about a product turning to crap because it was the most popular. At least, I don't see "crap" listed as a synonym for "popularity" in any of the dictionaries I can find.
Drop the Evelyn Wood course, and go back to reading for understanding instead of speed. You'll enjoy life a whole lot more, trust me.
So decrees....
Da Judge
Which is total BS of course, a product is either vulnerable or it isn't, the only thing popularity does is find those vulnerabilities really quickly.
What I do agree with is that Mozilla/FireFox each have their own share of vulnerabilities and their rising popularity will show in the end if they are really much more secure or not.
I think the only solution to alot of these security concerns is USER EDUCATION. I know at least 3 people who have been to PC World
As far as ActiveX, which was a big security hole, it was a matter of making a web browser more user friendly. Imagine, if you will, a house. If it had no doors or windows, it would be very secure, yet hard to get in and out of. That's why most houses have windows and doors, even though most burglars break in through them. Sure, a burglrar could develop a plan to blow a hole straight through a wall, but why shoudl he? The delicate balance is to make an item (house, browser, car, girlfriend) as user friendly as possible while still securing it against the bad people.
Regularly updates for government institions is fine - they all have 30/40 man IT departments to distribute the patches. Firefox having a critical flaw is just as bad as IE having one for home, as the home user will more than likely not check the mozilla.org homepage for updates.
oh, my german is a little rusty... does 'Dickopf' translate to 'fathead' ?
I would not trust secunia any farther than I could throw them.
But I've yet to meet a German who demands that I use only High German - they too are rather fond of idioms and street slang.
So remembers....
Da Judge
I will never understand why someone would defend a browser with "less" features and "more" security vulnerabilities.
Do you guys have stock MSFT? If not, stop defending MS. They are big enough to defend themselves without your help.
You must be new here. Welcome to neowin. Here is a quick guide to get you started:
At neowin, the following are considered good:
1. microsoft
2. IE
3. Intel
5. republicans & G. W. Bush
6. xbox
At neowin, the following are considered to suck:
1. IBM & Apple
2. Mozilla
3. AMD
4. GNU/Linux
6. Sega & Nintendo & Sony
Please post accordingly in the future.
Last edited by 2629 on 14 Sep 2004 - 06:13
LMAO... it sounds about right, actually.
As for the security issues regarding IE, can you really blame security departments for advising users to switch browsers, because as it stands IE is not a very secure browser and its not only the percentage of users that is the reason for this, despite the majority of people thinking it is although i am not dismissing it as a big factor. Many of the failing of IE are its total intergration with the OS and not to mention the cock up that is Active X. IE has, and im sure will continue to cause massive downtime and loss of data. It is the job of these firms to advise people on appropriate actions to take including changing browsers, not because they have a grudge against MS but because it is the prudent course of action to take.
Oh yeah and about your points about whats good and bad on neowin
1) MS is good, they have made great office software and a fairly good OS, not to mention great innovations like Media Centre (Although the method of getting it is pretty crappy). IBM can't be bad if you like MS, because don't forget its their chips that are going into the next gen XBOX that according to your list is also a good thing to like. Apple is a great company and its hard to dispute that they are pulling ahead in the OS department and not letting users down by pulling features to make deadlines (anyone remember Cairo, wonder if WinFS is going to be another actual product turned vision of the future due to lack of resources) also they have the whole digital music market, iPod and pretty damn good hardware, not to mention an actual realisation that looks and and function are major attributes in modern day computer use.
2) IE is good i will admit that, it has a great engine that was worth every penny MS paid for it, although feature wise its pretty behind and i think will be until Longhorn ships. Other browsers are keeping up to date and one of the most popular of them is Mozilla, and not everybody uses it in some misguided attempt to stick it to MS, currently as far as security and features goes its ahead of IE good enough reason in my book to like it.
3) Someone else is going to have to explain processor love, the way i see it AMD and Intel are just in a race and so far there has been no clear winner, one is in front one month, the other takes over the next month. Also horses for courses could be a good analogy for processor choice.
4 & 5) im not going to answer the party choice as im not an American, although what affects your declining economy affects ours and i personally don't see Bush as being bright enough to run the US, he has had a bad term and i wouldn't like to see an encore (IMHO my reasons don't belong in this thread). As for the clearly racist point you made, all i will say is a big FU and hope the admins spot your post but i will go ahead and report it anyways, just in case.
6) I fail to see how anyone can hate SEGA, Nintendo and Sony as all three of these companies have brought us hundreds of great products over the years and im sure will do in the future.
Also i was being deadly serious about fan boy'ism being explained to me, i really don't get it and actually find it kinda sad. If anyone can give me a valid reason for falling head over heels for a company or platform losing the ability to see what else is on the market i will concede but it better be a good reason.
You said it man
They could for example
Get rid of the mistake that was Active X or at least add a sandbox.
Actually use a permissions system.
Not load up services that are not needed.
Make automatic updates on by default.
de-intergrate IE from the OS.
These are just five things that should of been done in the development of XP and more skilled users than i would be able to point out many more, most of them are too late to do now and most of SP2 should also have been part of the initial offering. Guess we will have to wait to see what longhorn brings us, i hear they are trying to firm up but we will see.
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