Being in the automotive industry I'm having the good fortune (?) of having several weeks off. Hopefully that won't lead to more permanent time off. Unfortunately my wife's job is preventing her from taking any vacation time through the end of the year (sigh). That means this week I'm enjoying spending more time on-line that normal.

This morning I stumbled upon this Internet Explorer security warning.

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/111811

"The major press outlets are abuzz this morning with news of a major new security flaw that affects all versions of Internet Explorer from IE5 to the latest beta of IE8. The attack has serious and far-reaching ramifications -- and they're not just theoretical attacks. In fact, the flaw is already in wide use as a tool to steal online game passwords, with some 10,000 websites infected with the code needed to take advantage of the hole in IE.

Virtually all security experts (as well as myself) are counseling users to switch to any other web browser -- none of the others are affected, including Firefox, Chrome, and Opera -- at least for the time being"

I'm a pretty typical computer user - certainly not an expert - and am wondering what those who know more about these things thing about it.

I've used Firefox and like it, but found using bookmarks in it kind of a pain.

Today I loaded Google Chrome for the first time (using it now), and I've got to say I'm impressed so far. Simple. Very fast.

A few years back I had my work laptop messed up enough by malware that it needed to be re-imaged. It had Norton's security software on it and still got trashed. Since then I've been VERY careful about which sites I visit.

Your thoughts?

Ken

I use Safari on both my Mac's and PC. Works great and is very user friendly. If you have an iPod or iPhone and have connected it to the 'puter you are using, you probably have it. Oh yeah, NO SECURITY ISSUES.

Grew up on PC's, switched to Mac last christmas. I have one program that cannot be run on Mac that I have to reboot to windows OS on my mac. If I am in windows OS, I AM NOT on any network due to all the security issues. Now when the next job comes, I am sure it will come with a PC. It will be "work only" due to PC security issues and companies really don't like personal business on the time or machines.

Yea, IE has just gottne too unsafe to use anymore. I gave up on IE and windows about 5 yeras ago after I got hit twice with some crap I had to reinstall to remove. I had my system locked down really secure, running as a non admin user, etc.
No software is perfect and no software is completely safe, but to have the browser integrated into the os allows a browser hole to become an OS hole, the worst thing Microsoft ever did was that integration.

+1 on Chrome. I use it too.

BTW, what makes Mac more secure is that they are less juicy targets since there are fewer of them in the market place. They are installed in less critical locations, etc.

Rest assured, as Macs become more and more popular, they will become targets too. If Macs cross over to the "enterprise" in a big way you can bet on them becoming attacked just like their PC brethren. There is nothing inherent about the Mac's OS that makes it more secure. It is just less profitable to attempt to exploit them...

So for now, security through obscurity works....

http://www.networkcomputing.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=159900444

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=712742

http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2008/12/is-apple-os-x-more-secure-than.html


GarlyDog
CISSP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CISSP

But security added to obscurity is even better.

I can't blame IE - by the numbers, its just as safe or safer than Mozilla (who released a fix for a dozen vulns a couple days ago) or Opera (who did the same last night). I use each of these from time to time. IE is a bigger target, so caveat emptor, and with any browser be careful where you go. Microsoft already released the critical update patch to address this, and I applied it, so no worries there.

For the record, I run mostly Windows Vista, and in 20+ years have only been hacked by my daughter's iTunes app (which has an attrocious security record), or my son's predeliction for dodgy Runescape installs. In general I trust Microsoft to code more securely than Apple or some of the others, and I think their recent track record backs that up - and in software, the only relevent measure is today's actual performance. ymmv of course.

I spend ALL DAY on a computer, mostly using web sites, doing a LOT of research and planning. I use the web ALL FREAKING DAY.

Since I make a living with web browsers and a laptop, I need one that WORKS all the time.

Since I do all my banking and financial management online, I also am critically aware of the security issues facing IE users.

I personally use a Mac Book Pro, I browse mostly with Firefox with a raft of plug-ins and filters, LittleSnitch runs on the computer (monitors all network connections), my firewall is ON at all times on the computer.

For the times where I simply MUST use IE, I fire up an instance of Windows XP as a virtual machine with Parallels on the Mac. I keep a "fresh install" copy of the XP virtual machine image,I copy that, run the VM from the copy, leaving the original "safe" copy alone and once I'm done with using IE for whatever reason I was forced to do it (mostly [censored] poor web coding or an insane reliance on Active-X), I delete the potentially contaminated copy of XP.

I'd sooner travel across the arctic in wet jeans and T-shirt than use IE for anything. It's a DANGEROUSLY BAD program.

One more thing...

Google Chrome. A good browser for today and a better browser for tomorrow.

Get it. Live it. Love it.

It's CRISP and SIMPLE.

I've been in the Unix world since the late 70's. It was part time, but I switched over to Linux full time in the mid 90's, when Windows 95 came out. I don't hate MS, nor am I "religious" about operating systems, I just hate GUI's.

I use IE at work (no choice), but have my wife use Firefox, and I do sometimes also. It's pretty good. Most of the time, I use Pine. I still like it better than anything else, and I don't have to look at all the stupid graphics everyone tries to force on me. I'm getting grouchy in my middle age...

Since Mac is now Unix based, that is the way to go, and I've gotten most of my family to switch over. I still prefer Linux because I live on the command line, but if a user is not interested in that sort of thing, go Mac. If not Mac, then Firefox or Chrome (haven't tried that one yet).

Popularity and numbers are only one part of security, there are other things to look at. Look at the description of security bullitons for an os like linux or browser like firefox, they are more often than not minor trivial things, then look at the bullitons for IE, they are large holes into the kernel of windows.