Return of the Browser Wars

By Jerry Pournelle

July 26, 2004

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The Big Question: Internet Explorer

The VX2 spyware scare was one problem. Another was Download.Ject, aka Scob, and called by some The Russian Hack. This exploited vulnerabilities in the Microsoft IIS servers (one reason why Apache has a significant web server market share) to broadcast malware that exploited in turn Internet Explorer vulnerabilities. That was significant because it caused some journalists to advise users to abandon Internet Explorer entirely. Others didn't go that far, but did say that one ought not use Microsoft Internet Explorer as one's default Internet browser. Perhaps the most extreme statement was "The U.S. government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) is warning Web surfers to stop using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser."

For those unfamiliar with it, US-CERT "is a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the public and private sectors. Established to protect the nation's Internet infrastructure, US-CERT coordinates defense against and responses to cyber attacks across the nation," so a warning from US-CERT is pretty serious, and if they're advising you to "stop using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser," it may be time to do just that.

All of which prompted a call to Microsoft's public relations people, who arranged a telephone interview with two senior program managers on Microsoft's Security team.

Microsoft's Side of the Story

My interview was with Gary Schare, Director of Security Project Management for Windows, and some of his team.

First, regarding CERT advice to drop IE, they said "We haven't seen any such CERT headline. We've seen journalists who report it, but we can't find any such thing." Which prompted me to go do my own search, and they're right: While I see a number of signed editorials and columns stating that this is CERT's advice, I found no URL linking that statement to CERT itself, and my search of CERT didn't turn it up either.

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