Internet Explorer Safe?

Last week, Germany cautioned online web users against Microsoft's Internet Explorer. This, after a malicious code which was implicated in attacks on Google was published online. Now France too has issued the same warning. This warning comes for all versions of the IE browser. The warning also includes the clicking on links in unsolicited e-mails.

The Federal Office for Information Security in Germany issued a warning against all versions of Internet Explorer, and strongly recommended users to switch to Firefox or Google Chrome. Then French agency Certa went on to issue a similar warning. Though, the UK government is playing wait and watch, UK's Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) will be continuously monitoring the situation and would issue advisories as and when needed.

Although, as of now only, IE6 has been attacked, but since details of the exploit are now freely available online, hackers would use and change the code to successfully attack other versions of IE too. Cliff Evans, Microsoft's head of security and privacy said, "So far the firm had only seen malicious code that targeted the older version of its browser, IE6. The risk is minimal. For a web user to be affected, they would have to be using IE6 and visit a compromised website. There are very few of them out there. Calls to change browsers were not very helpful. If you look at other browsers, it's likely they will have other vulnerabilities. We feel strongly that IE8 is most secure browser on the market."

Microsoft is working on a patch to fix the problem, but the current situation is not going to be very helpful for the goodwill of the company, whose browser is already struggling for market share against the ever-so-popular Mozilla Firefox.