Security threats Toolkit

Story: 2004: Internet Explorer's year of shame

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The IE browser is going to go the way of the Microsoft IIS web server. Nobody has used that for any serious work for ages now, following a string of security concerns -- everyone swapped their sites onto Apache/Linux, which are lower maintenance, and cheaper to boot.

Now, more and more, we (I work for a large ISV) see customers dropping IE and going to safer and more capable alternatives and indeed I am in the middle of certifying some of our software for Mozilla (so far it has Just Worked). Regarding the SHELL: exploit the fault is still at least half Microsoft's because Mozilla on Macintosh, Unix and Linux are not affected -- ONLY Windows, as usual, has suffered, so once again, it was MS's code that had the holes.

If you feel the effort spent in constantly patching and repatching such a lame old browser is worthwhile, then that's fine, but do be aware that in a commercial setting, such effort brings additional expense but delivers no value. This alone will effectively bring to an end the reign of IE as the browser of choice in work settings.

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