Internet Explorer Allows Attackers to Take Complete Control

A security firm released information this week regarding a bug in Internet Explorer, versions 6 through 11, that allows an attacker to take complete control of an effected system. Microsoft confirmed in an advisory on April 26th that an attacker could do things such as view, change, or delete data, install malicious programs, or create accounts that would give the attacker full user rights.

Microsoft has not released information regarding the time frame they expect the bug to be fixed. Based on Microsoft’s history dealing with similar issues, the issue is not expected to be resolved anytime soon.

In short, using Internet Explorer allows someone to invade your privacy and secretly control your computer. It’s highly recommended that Microsoft Internet Explorer users switch to Mozilla’s open-source alternative, Firefox, for web browsing.

This switch should be a long-term one due to Mozilla’s history dealing with similar issues and it’s open-source nature.

Open-source sprouted from the technology community as a response to closed-source software owned by corporations. Open-source software provides it’s source code free of charge to the public to use, copy, modify, sub-license, or distribute, which allows a virtually unlimited number of global experts the opportunity to help resolve issues at speeds closed-source corporations cannot compete with, because of their limited number of available experts.

Firefox’s vulnerabilities were fixed on average one day after the exploit code was made available, as compared to nine days for Internet Explorer.

A 2006 Symantec study showed that, although Firefox had surpassed other browsers in the number of vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities that year through September, these vulnerabilities were patched far more quickly than those found in other browsers – Firefox’s vulnerabilities were fixed on average one day after the exploit code was made available, as compared to nine days for Internet Explorer. As of February 11, 2011, Firefox 3.6 had no known unresolved security vulnerabilities according to Secunia. Internet Explorer 8 had five unresolved security vulnerabilities, the worst being rated “Less Critical” by Secunia. On January 28, 2013, Mozilla was recognized as the most trusted internet company for privacy in 2012. This study was performed by Ponemon Institute and was a result of a survey from more than 100,000 consumers in the United States.

To download Mozilla’s free web browser, Firefox, click here.