Top admen beg Microsoft to switch off ‘Do Not Track’ in IE 10
Microsoft is in hot water with big-brand advertisers over its implementation of Do-Not-Track by default in the latest iteration of its Internet Explorer browser. The ad-slingers say Internet Explorer 10’s Do-Not-Track feature will hurt advertisers, consumers and competition.
The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has published an open letter to Microsoft’s chief executive Steve Ballmer, senior vice president and general counsel Brad Smith and chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie opposing the fact DNT will be turned on by default in Windows 8’s browser.
The letter comes less than a month before Windows 8 is due to be released to the public on new PCs and tablets. Read more...
Microsoft promises two-step IE fix
Microsoft has promised it will release a fix “in the next few days” to address the recently-identified flaw in Internet Explorer. At the time of writing, it is only possible to work around the bug, or stop using Internet Explorer, if one wishes to avoid the potential effects of attacks exploiting the vulnerability.
In a new TechNet post, Microsoft's Director of Trustworthy Computing Yunsun Wee writes that Redmond will issue a fix he describes as “an easy-to-use, one-click, full-strength solution any Internet Explorer user can install.” Read more...
New IE exploit variant used to distribute PlugX malware, researchers say
Researchers from security vendor AlienVault have identified a variant of a recently discovered Internet Explorer exploit that is used to infect targeted computers with the PlugX RAT (remote access Trojan) program.
The newly discovered exploit variant targets the same unpatched vulnerability in IE 6, 7, 8, and 9 as the original exploit, but uses slightly different code and has a different payload, AlienVault Labs manager Jaime Blasco said Tuesday in a blog post.
The first exploit was found over the weekend on a known malicious server by security researcher Eric Romang and distributed the Poison Ivy RAT. The second exploit version discovered by AlienVault researchers was found on a different server and installs a much newer RAT program called PlugX. Read more...
Internet Explorer needs fresh dev infusion for a full recovery
Despite years of pressure from government antitrust actions and open-source upstarts like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser still commands more than 50 per cent of the global desktop browser market. While Microsoft remains an obvious choice for many consumers, there's some indication that Microsoft's venerable browser may be in trouble with a potentially more important demographic: developers.
For years IE was in free fall as Chrome gained market share due to its superior speed, security, and ease of use (including managing extensions). By late 2011, it wasn't surprising that some were writing eulogies for IE as it shed 6 per cent market share in just three months while Chrome soared. In fact, by some estimates, Chrome actually surpassed IE's market share in early 2012. Read more...
Internet Explorer flaw triggers Gmail nation-state attack message
A security flaw in Internet Explorer is triggering messages in some users’ Gmail accounts that they may be the target of an attack from a nation-state.
The vulnerability in IE was revealed by Microsoft on "Patch Tuesday," a day designated by the company every month to move fixes to its software programs.
Although the package of fixes includes a patch to address the vulnerability in IE, the flaw triggering the warning message was not addressed in the package.
"The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted webpage using Internet Explorer," Microsoft explained in an advisory. Read more...
Chrome to take world’s top browser spot for May
Google's Chrome is about to grab the top browser spot for a full month for the first time from Microsoft's Internet Explorer, data from a Web analytics company showed.
For the month through Monday, Chrome had an average usage share of 32.5%, slightly higher than Internet Explorer's (IE) 32.1%, according to Irish company StatCounter.
If the remaining three days of May play out as did the previous 28, Chrome will take the browser crown from IE for a full month for the first time since Chrome's September 2008 launch.
Previously, Chrome had edged IE on weekends, and then earlier this month topped Microsoft's combined browser usage share for the week ending May 20. That trend continued in the month's fourth week as Chrome beat IE 32.9% to 31.4% for the seven days ending May 27. Read more...
Mozilla and Google blast IE-only Windows on ARM
Mozilla and Google are crying foul over Microsoft restrictions blocking rivals from Windows 8 on ARM, due later this year.
Firefox-shop Mozilla has branded Microsoft's restrictions a return to the digital dark ages "where users and developers didn't have browser choices".
Harvey Anderson, Mozilla general counsel, accused Microsoft of restricting user choice, reducing competition and chilling innovation by only allowing Internet Explorer to run on Windows RT – unveiled last month by Microsoft as the new name for Windows on ARM (WOA). He said:
Only Internet Explorer will be able to perform many of the advanced computing functions vital to modern browsers in terms of speed, stability, and security to which users have grown accustomed. Given that IE can run in Windows on ARM, there is no technical reason to conclude other browsers can't do the same. Read more...
Chrome beats IE for a weekend
Fresh from knocking off Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the web's most-used browser for a single day in March, Google's Chrome browser has now claimed more users than Redmond's HTML-cruncher for a whole weekend.
Data gathered by StatCounter shows Chrome has enjoyed a day of dominance on most weekends since its March ascendancy. On May 5th and 6th, however, it opened a gap over IE. Sunday the 6th even saw Chrome take a lead of nearly three percent. Read more...
IE ‘silent’ upgrade helps put newest browser on Windows
Microsoft's decision late last year to switch on "silent" upgrades for Internet Explorer (IE) has moved some Windows users to newer versions, but has had little, if any, impact on the oldest editions, IE6 and IE7, according to usage statistics.
In December 2011, Microsoft announced it would start automatically upgrading IE so that users ran the newest version suitable for their copy of Windows.
Under the plan, Windows XP users still on IE6 or IE7 would be updated to IE8, while Windows Vista or Windows 7 users running IE7 or IE8 would be pushed to IE9. Read more...
Use Internet Explorer 9? You need this update, stat
Just over 8.5% of TNW readers, which amounts to a whole pile of traffic, use Internet Explorer on their normal computers (non-mobile), so this post is for them. If you use Internet Explorer (and we presume that that means you are on version 9, the good one), you need to make sure that you have the April ‘Cumulative Security Update’ for the browser.
It patches some five previously reported issues, making it an essential grab if Internet Explorer is your daily drive. Depending on how you have your Windows Update settings tuned, you might be snagging it automatically, but if not, details can be found right here. Read more...
Internet Explorer’s market share recovery continues
Internet Explorer appears to have found new footing in the browser market, picking up market share in March, strengthening the notion that Microsoft is at last turning around its fortunes in the software niche.
The company could not be more proud. Trumpeting the news, Microsoft claimed late last night that “March was a great month for the IE team.” That’s mostly correct.
Internet Explorer has two things going for it at the moment, from a market share perspective. The first is that in the United States, it’s approaching 50% market share on computers running Windows 7. This means that Microsoft is making progress in its project of phasing out Internet Explorer 8, an application that is quite outdated and unfit for the modern Web. Read more...
Windows 8 lets users decide which IE opens links
Windows 8 users will be able to set which version of Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) automatically opens Web pages when links are clicked, Microsoft said Monday.
The new operating system features dual and dueling editions of IE10, one for the traditional desktop and another designed specifically for the touch-first, tile-based Metro user interface (UI).
By default, links clicked in the Metro environment open in that UI's IE10, while links clicked from within a program running on the desktop render in the conventional browser.
The two browsers rely on the same engine, but they're not twins by any stretch. Read more...
Chrome beats IE market share for one day
Google's Chrome took the crown as the world's most-used web browser last Sunday, March 18th. But as the world suited up to go back to work on Monday, Internet Explorer re-gained the lead.
So says online service StatCounter, although the service also urges us all to take its data with a grain of salt. That's because while it collects data about 15 billion page views per month from three million websites, it says its results “are subject to quality assurance testing and revision for 14 days from publication. Read more...
Google, Microsoft butt heads over IE privacy skirting
Google yesterday countered Microsoft's contention that it's skirting Internet Explorer's privacy protection, saying it's "impractical" to comply with IE's rules.
One privacy researcher said there was enough blame to apportion to both Google and Microsoft.
The latest dustup over Google's privacy practices began early Monday, when Microsoft's top executive for IE accused Google of circumventing the browser's default privacy defense so that Google's ad network could track IE users' online movements without their permission.
Microsoft's charges were similar to ones made last week after the Wall Street Journal said Google was sidestepping the privacy protection of Apple's Safari, which is bundled with Mac OS X and is the only authorized browser on the iPhone and iPad. Read more...
Microsoft claims Google bypassed its browser privacy too
Microsoft has released data showing that Google has been bypassing the user-defined privacy settings in Internet Explorer by using incorrect P3P identification terms.
“When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too?” Dean Hachamovitch, VP of Internet Explorer wrote in a blog post. “We’ve discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies.” Read more...