Posted on 12/20/2004 5:20:21 AM PST by mathprof
Fake sites could soon have legit addresses and security icons
A newly reported security problem in Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) web browser allows attackers to create a fake website that looks exactly like a genuine site.
The vulnerability lets an attacker display any website while the address bar in IE will display a trusted web address, for example https://www.paypal.com/, and even show the icon indicating SSL (secure socket layer) security, security researchers warned on Thursday.
The issue could result in more sophisticated phishing scams, a prevalent type of online attack that typically combines spam email messages and web pages that look like legitimate e-commerce sites to steal sensitive information such as user names, passwords and credit card numbers.
The problem was discovered by a security researcher from the Greyhats Security Group and reported on Thursday by Danish security company Secunia. The vulnerability lies in an ActiveX control in IE and has been found to affect version 6.0 of the browser running on Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and earlier versions, according to a Secunia advisory.
Microsoft is investigating the report, a company spokeswoman said Friday. "We have not been made aware of any attacks attempting to use the reported vulnerabilities or customer impact at this time, but we are aggressively investigating the public reports," she said.
Upon completion of this investigation, Microsoft may provide a security fix through its monthly release process or as an out-of-cycle security update, she said. Meanwhile, Secunia suggests users protect themselves by disabling ActiveX in IE or setting the IE security level to "high" for the internet zone.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1304088/posts
I have FireFox and would not go back to IE for anything! FireFox is superior to IE AND Netscape. (Not to mention more reliable)
I got FireFox too. It's at least as fast as IE, which Netscape wasn't. Also, I like the way their "Find" feature works.
Tabbed Internet surfing is incredible! How did I manage without that?
My only complaint is that when I am viewing a FR thread and I hit refresh, Firefox goes to the last post at that time, rather than putting me back to the post I was on and loading the new posts below that. I have to scroll back up to find where I was when I hit refresh. This has to be something I can set in the options, but I can't find it. Anyone have any ideas?
I've used Opera in the past and it's good and fast.
I love Firefox. Unfortunately, IE is still necessary for a number of sites that I visit. And when I do personal web design, you still have to code for IE.
Its a known bug I believe that hasnt been remedied.
I go by the code "if it works in Firefox, 99 times out of 100, it will in MS".
Using Opera for 3 years now.
Allegedly the fastest browser out there (PC World Best Browser 2004), and tons of useful features. I find Mozilla and Firefox too skimpy for my needs.
There's a free version and a pay version for $39.00. The free version shows an ad banner in the toolbar, otherwise identical.
http://www.opera.com
heh firefox is netscape.
Ok that sped it up a bit but it still takes twice as long as IE to load.You got any tricks that'll fix that minor issue?By "load" I mean when you click on the desktop icon for firefox it has always taken twice as long to open as IE.
Do you have more than one version of Firefox, Mozilla, or Netscape on your computer? If so I've found that they share some files, but you may also have some redundant files which may slow things down on start up as your computer figures out which of the redundant files to use. Throw out the redundancies and programs you aren't using.
Also try alloting more memory to Firefox.
Preach it, Comrade.
Thanks for the tip!
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