Microsoft Internet Explorer users told to switch browsers over 'zero-day' flaw | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Internet Explorer users told to switch browsers over 'zero-day' flaw

guardian.co.uk

11 pointsalexandros5 comments

Microsoft notified our company last Friday afternoon, and put a lot of hands on deck to address the issue with a couple big oil companies in downtown Calgary.

Our shop is officially Internet Explorer on the desktop, but this event has resulted in first-ever "Use Firefox" activity to be supported corporately. Websense was also turned up to limit web browsing beyond what we've ever done before.

What has surprised me is the gap between our learning of the problem, and the still (to my knowledge) unreleased patch for IE.

I am not surprised to see that it took 4 days for me to find word of this on Hacker News: I bet most of you are using Macs or Linux on the job as well as at home. Carry on.

This may well be the beachhead for the introduction of firefox into some hardcore IE-only businesses. Which can only be a good thing.

I bet most of you are using Macs or Linux on the job ...

I wish. The places that I have worked, doing the kind of work I do (which usually means I at least have local admin permissions to my own machine), it's more likely that I will be using a Windows box with Firefox as my primary browser.

It's still kind of depressing that so many people are using IE that this is even an issue.

Especially the "gamers" that this virus is targeting -- shouldn't they be using quick, reliable browsers rather than being a slave to IE!? Guess they're not as cool as many of them think...

Many desktop applications (AIM, Valve, WinAmp and MANY more) incorporate IE into their application natively for ads and integrated browsers.

I picked up a bug last week for the first time in years. Just did a reformat yesterday and I don't even use IE explicitly except to test CSS compatibility on my own sites.

Edit: I would love a good excuse to retreat to Linux.

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