Browser Security News

While Microsoft is touting the fact Internet Explorer 8 is the single most widely used Web browser, the combined percentages of IE 6 and 7 users surpass it. The use of the older browsers means many users aren’t taking advantage of the latest browser security protections.

We predicted it would happen, and it finally has: Internet Explorer 8 has surpassed IE6, easily the most hated version of Microsoft’s browser among the tech-savvy, after passing IE7 the month before that.

One of the ways Microsoft plans to push Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 users to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 is convincing them the latest version is much more secure, which it is. Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer, last week posted a story on the IEBlog about how IE8 managed to [...]

Internet Explorer 7 and 8’s default security settings can be unsafe for internal, intranet-based Web applications, according to newly published research.

Microsoft Corp. will begin pushing Internet Explorer 8 to users running the older IE6 and IE7 browsers next week, the company has announced. Although people running earlier versions of IE8 have been seeing upgrade offers since Microsoft released the final code last month, only now is the company getting around to posting the new browser [...]

Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser has made impressive market share gains in Europe over the past few years. In the latest marketshare report released by StatCounter, Firefox 3 has finally surpassed Internet Explorer 7 as the most popular browser in Europe in a breakdown by version number.

When Mark Dowd and Alex Sotirov demonstrated a technique for bypassing Vista’s memory protections at Black Hat last year, the security community was stunned. Microsoft officials said at the time they were working on ways to defeat the pair’s attack and now that protection has arrived, in the form of Internet Explorer 8.

Microsoft confirmed it is looking into a potentially dangerous security hole in newly shipped Internet Explorer 8, but played down as speculation that the shipping version of IE8 is at serious risk of attack.

Microsoft made the latest version of Internet Explorer available as a free download Thursday. You can grab Internet Explorer 8 for Windows Vista or Windows XP (but not Windows 7) at microsoft.com/ie8.

Internet Explorer 8 hits the wires Thursday with a bevy of new security features, including more protection against hacked sites, ActiveX lockdowns, and a private browsing mode. And if you’re wondering whether you should get it, then here’s your short answer: Yes.