IE Bug Lets Hackers Phish With Google Desktop

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123826,00.asp

Well, here is another nasty little present. Thanks Bill Gates.


A bug in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser gives phishers a way to scan the hard drives of Google Desktop users, according to an Israeli hacker. Because of a flaw in the way IE processes Web pages, a malicious Web site could use the attack to steal sensitive information like credit card numbers or passwords from the hard drives of its visitors.

Google Desktop users who use IE are currently completely exposed," wrote hacker Matan Gillon in an e-mail interview. "An experienced attacker can covertly harvest their hard drives for sensitive information such as passwords and credit card numbers. Since Google also indexes e-mails which can be read in the Web interface itself, it's also possible to access them using this attack."

snip

Hackers would first need to trick users into visiting a malicious Web site for the attack to be successful, Gillon says. The attack works with IE 6 and Google Desktop version 2, and may also work on other versions of Microsoft's browser, but not on non-Microsoft browsers like Firefox or Opera, he adds.

Firefox and Safari are MUCH better.

Friends don't let friends use Microsoft.

Bells and whistles are much more important than silly things like security.

when someone comes to me and needs info instantly. Of course, I lock my desktop down a bit tighter than most :-)

How many of these things do people need to read before they get the clue that Microsoft are fuckups?

Go Linux!!!!! :party:

So money ought not be a bar for most.

:shrug:

I'm not a gamer.

Cost of Linux: 0$
Keeping my hardware and getting rid of Microsoft: Priceless

I have to use Mac Minis at work. At any given time, about half of ours are unusable, either because essential programs will immediately crash when loaded up or because the computer is completely frozen. The remedy? Reboot and hope for the best. It's too bad we don't have newer, faster Macs -- if we did, we would have much more interesting bugs to deal with. And don't lose sight of the fact that when you buy a Mac you're at the mercy of Apple's planned obsolescence. In a couple years and a few OS upgrades, that fast new Mac will be a brick.

On the other hand, Linux runs lightning fast on my home computer, which I put together from spare parts in 2001. Window navigation in Gnome is a lot faster than Mac OS too.

And it loads pages faster too.

and more sophisticated and feature-filled than Firefox.

But any browser than IE is the best one to use. :)

great. So many neat features that I wouldn't want to have to live without. In addition, I use lots of spyware,adware and virus killers.

I have a friend who has a website, with a google thingee on the front page, to enable visitors to search within the site.

Is that what "Google Desktop" means?

If not, what exactly does this mean?

It's not specific to Google Desktop at all.

It essentially is a Javascript security breach which allows any webpage or HTML email run in Outlook to execute code from another website.

harder to avoid!

I just un-installed that P.O.S.

Yet another reason to not use Virus Explorer or Google.