By now you have all heard of the new Internet Explorer vulnerability and its probably getting boring. So I just wanted to shed some light on this topic and all the media hype that has gone along with it.

Firstly, what is this vulnerability, how does it work:

The vulnerability is to do with an invalid pointer reference in the data binding function of IE. What does that mean? Who knows, and who really cares. The fact is that this vulnerability can get you just by visiting sites that have been infected with the exploit.

When data binding is enabled (which is the default state), it is possible under certain conditions for an object to be released without updating the array length, leaving the potential to access the deleted object’s memory space. This can cause Internet Explorer to exit unexpectedly, in a state that is exploitable.’”

So why all the panic?

There have been numerous reporters, journalists and “IT Experts” coming out of the woodwork and telling us to use other browsers, and I even heard one idiot telling people to stay offline altogether.

To get infected, you would need to visit an infected site (which are generally not the sites most people visit), and the stats show are that 0.2% of users have been infected, but this number might not even be accurate.

The simplest solution is to just patch IE and get on with it.  If in doubt, use Firefox or Opera, but bear in mind they have had many security updates recently and Firefox was rated as the most vulnerable Windows application by Bit9.

Whatever you do, don’t listen to the media hype. Do some of your own research into threats like this and you will see how exagerated the whole thing is. Just browse smart, keep your security products and Windows up-to-date and you should never have a problem.

—————————
Fix PC Errors – Free Download