Tag Archive: IE

IE usage grows in July, Firefox share declines

Posted Aug.01, 2010 under Firefox, Google Chrome, Microsoft

Usage of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has continued to grow, albeit slowly, since April, with Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome suffering market share falls in July.

Monthly information released today by Net Applications shows Internet Explorer increased in market share by approximately 0.42% in July, with Safari making a gain of 0.24% and Opera 0.18%.

Mozilla’s Firefox web browser suffered the biggest loss, with usage falling 0.9% to hold 22.91% of the US web browser market, while Google’s Chrome browser fell for the first time since September last year, falling a modest 0.88% to 7.16%.

Internet Explorer has continued to make small increases in market share over the past few months, reversing a trend which previously plagued the browser as competitors bit into the market and stole users, resulting in IE’s market share falling from 65.71% in September last year to 59.75% in May this year.

As mentioned above, it seems Google’s exponential growth with Chrome may have come to a halt, with figures showing its market share fell for the first time since the browser was released. And Apple’s Safari web browser, of which version 5 was released during WWDC in June this year, has continued to gain traction, now sitting with a 5.09% share.

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Microsoft releases cumulative out-of-band update for Internet Explorer

Posted Mar.30, 2010 under Microsoft

Microsoft said on Tuesday that it has released a new out-of-band cumulative update for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 users.

The update (MS10-018) fixes 10 flaws, with the most serious allowing remote attackers to execute arbitrary code. Microsoft said it accelerated testing of this update due to the growing attacks against a publicly disclosed vulnerability. Nine other flaws were disclosed privately to Microsoft by security researchers. The public vulnerability was rated “extremely critical” by security researchers Secunia. The out-of-band patch is the second time this year that Microsoft has broken the monthly “Patch Tuesday” cycle that the software giant typically uses to release security updates.

Microsoft stressed that this current out-of-band patch does not affect Internet Explorer 8. Jerry Bryant, Group Manager of Response Communications at Microsoft, explained that the company is also investigating a potential flaw in Internet Explorer 8 discovered at last weeks “pwn2own” hacking competition. “We are still investigating that issue at this time so we do not have an update available,” said Bryant. Pwn2own saw Internet Explorer 8, Firefox and Safari all fall victim to previously undisclosed vulnerabilites. Google’s Chrome browser escaped untested.

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Microsoft warns of new zero-day exploit for Internet Explorer

Posted Mar.10, 2010 under Microsoft, Windows

Microsoft has posted a new warning about an exploit that affects its Internet Explorer browser.  The zero-day vulnerability, which is already being exploited in the wild, allows for malicious users to install malware on a vulnerable machine.

According to CRN.com, the vulnerable “systems include Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, and Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7. However, Microsoft said that so far, Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 5.01 Service Pack 4 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 are not affected.”

The exploit occurs when there is an invalid pointer reference.  This reference could allow for malicious users to install and launch malware when the object reference is deleted. Microsoft said that the current attacks appear to be targeted but they are currently working towards a fix.

For any user that is still using a legacy version of Internet Explorer, this is one more compelling reason to upgrade your version to IE 8.  By upgrading to IE 8, you are removing one more potential exploit that could allow malware to be installed on your machine.

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Microsoft investigating new Internet Explorer vulnerability in Windows XP

Posted Mar.01, 2010 under Microsoft, Windows XP

2010 hasn’t seen a particularly good start to the year for Microsoft’s flagship browser, Internet Explorer.

Microsoft officials are now warning that a new vulnerability has been discovered in Internet Explorer running on Windows XP. Secunia, a Danish computer security service provider, claims the vulnerability affects Internet Explorer 7 on a fully patched Windows XP SP3 system but that other versions may also be affected. Microsoft officials confirmed the flaw could allow an attacker to host a maliciously crafted web page and run arbitrary code if they could convince a user to visit the web page and then get them to press the F1 key in response to a pop up dialog box.

Microsoft confirmed the issue involves the use of VBScript and Windows Help files in Internet Explorer. Windows Help files are included in a long list of what Microsoft refers to as “unsafe file types”. The file types are designed to invoke automatic actions during normal use of the files but can also be used by attackers to try and compromise a system. In a company blog posting on Sunday, Microsoft’s Senior Security Communications Manager - Jerry Bryant, confirmed the company is still investigating the issue. “We are not aware of any attacks seeking to exploit this issue at this time and in the current state of our investigation, we have determined that users running Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Vista, are not affected by this issue,” said Bryant.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has had a rough start to the year:

January

The year started off badly when a vulnerability was unveiled after Google went public that they were targeted in a sophisticated cyber-attack. The breach, involving Internet Explorer 6, resulted in the theft of intellectual property. The flaw was later patched in a rare out of band security update. If that wasn’t bad enough a new flat in Internet Explorer was discovered just a day after the out of band patch.

February

If January was a month to remember then February certainly wasn’t much better. At the beginning of the month a new vulnerability was discovered, affecting IE 5.01 and IE 6 on Windows 2000, IE 6 on Windows 2000 SP4 and IE6, IE7 and IE8 on Windows XP and Windows 2003. The software giant patched the flaw in a bumper patch Tuesday which contained 13 bulletins – five rated Critical, seven rated Important, and one rated Moderate – addressing 26 vulnerabilities.

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