Internet Explorer Security Patch

This isn't something that I would normally bother blogging on - and from the lack of recent posts you can glean that I'm pretty busy - BUT I've just had an e-mail from my better half's Mother (and a fine woman she is - just in case she ever reads this!!) asking if she 'should do anything' as an article had made the Daily Mail. Therefore I think the hysteria on this one must have reached fever pitch and I'll chip in the calm it down.

FIRST - There is a patch was released last night and my machines are now patched. Those who don’t use Automatic Updates should go to https://update.microsoft.com

SECOND - if you want a longer explanation and the webcast link then James has a good post

 

Finally, and I know that I have 'beefed' about this before lets keep some balance. On the same day the good old Beeb was suggesting people move away from IE there were two interesting article on a site with IMHO a bit more technical cred, the 'Zero Day' security blog on ZDNet, firstly according to this post ALL major browsers have weaknesses in storing passwords so which one would be BBC prefer you move to? I've written before on Chrome , or perhaps Firefox - well that's the subject of the second article. According to this post Firefox is #1 in a list of the 12 most vulnerable apps. Hmmmm so maybe not then!!

 

The facts still remain that regrettably security incidents do happen - and patches are required. Microsoft software is no different. What I do like now though with Microsoft software is that a) it's MORE secure by design, e.g. Vista has significantly less vulnerabilities than other OS's, and not only do we disclose but we patch quickly. Hats off to the folk in Redmond who probably didn't sleep to bring us the patch for this zero day vulnerability so quickly.

 

Finally, if you are a home user please make sure you follow the advice here. If you are a corporate user then you need to ensure that you have a tried, tested and trusted mechanism for deploying patches to your clients and servers.