The Triangle

Issue date: 7/9/04 Section: Sci-Tech

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water - Microsoft's Internet Explorer, also known as Internet Deplorer and Internet Exploder among the tech savvy, could be leaving your computer and personal privacy at great risk.

As someone who keeps a close eye on the industry, I can tell you that not a week goes by without me hearing about yet another Microsoft related security flaw, many of which relate to perhaps the most widely used Microsoft (MS) product - Internet Explorer (IE).

Microsoft may have won the browser war, but the price of that victory is beginning to materialize. The most recent IE security alert related to a flaw concerning the means by which IE stores and retrieves secure credit and identity information from purchasing sites - EBay, PayPal, and the like. This is what all of those Citibank commercials are referring to when they talk about identity theft.

MS press releases insist that they are working as fast as possible to combat these security flaws as they become apparent. Industry observers say that MS's efforts are simply not enough to secure holes in time to prevent malicious hacking. MS is banking on the release of Service Pack #2 for Windows XP, which they claim will include a much improved and much more secure version of IE 6.

Many consumers feel that these security fixes cannot wait for a major release, and that these problems areas need to be patched as soon as possible in a damage control effort.

Eighty percent of all Internet browsing is done with IE v5 or v6, which is certainly one of the reasons for MS's troubles. In this case, IE's market dominance has spawned its own set of problems.

If you're going to write code to exploit someone's browsing habits, you're going to want to target the browser most commonly used by the largest sample of people. It's the same reason that so few viruses are written to attack OS X, UNIX, Linux, etcetera.

Security problems with IE have become so rampant that a division of the National Department for Homeland Security, the Computer Emergency Readiness Team, www.cert.gov, has recommended that Americans suspend their usage of IE and seek alternative browsing solutions.

The problem goes beyond identity theft and viruses - Pop-ups and Spyware (Adware) must also be taken into account. These two internet nuisances have been every system administrator's nightmare for the last few years. Generally speaking, both pop-ups and Spyware work in concert or separately to present Internet users with advertising.

They are similar to viruses, but somehow claim to be legitimate software packages. Typically bundled with free downloads, Spyware can significantly slow down your computing experience while aggregating usage information to be used in marketing. Doesn't legitimate software typically ask before installing itself on your system?

Spyware scanners and pop-up blockers aside, one of the first step users can take to protect themselves from both infestation and identity theft is to heed the advice of CERT - use an alternative browsing solution.

While there are a number of browsers available (Opera, Safari, Netscape, Konqueror) I have chosen to highlight my preferred browsing solution as it is not only free, but functional on a variety of platforms including MS Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and to a certain extent, Sun Solaris.

This feature-rich browser comes from the open-source development community known as Mozilla, www.mozilla.org, and is called FireFox, www.mozilla.org/products/firefox, formerly known as FireBird. Currently at v.0.9.1, FireFox has been in development for a little more than two years and is predicted to have a v1.0 release sometime this quarter.

Media Credit: The Triangle

Despite being a pre-1.0 release, FireFox includes a number of features absent from IE, and is billed as a more secure browser. I do not necessarily buy into FireFox being "code-wise" any more or less secure than IE.

But I do believe that its relative obscurity among the general Internet using population and its status as an OpenSource product, a sector not typically targeted by hackers, is a major contributing factor when it comes to security and general peace of mind.

FireFox has received praise from industry analysts as well as general consumers and is the backbone of the latest Netscape Navigator releases. The advantages of FireFox are not limited purely to security, though it is a factor to be considered. FireFox is, as the Mozilla team members refer to it, a "lean, mean browsing machine."

Featuring a built in pop-up blocker, FireFox has put a stop to pop-ups almost completely. I have been using FireFox for about a year, and in that time can recall only three pop-up ads. It's always fun to show friends how you can check the weather, www.weather.com, without having to close 3-4 browser windows when you're done.

On occasion, FireFox will alert you that a pop-up is attempting to execute, and ask you whether to allow this action. With FireFox, you're in control.

Because FireFox is developed by a community of independent contributors with the users in mind, there are slew of plug-ins and expansion options, called extensions, available for free download - Dictionary/Bible search bars, Blogging tools, as well as appearance enhancements.

You can also forget about having to download and install the Google toolbar, toolbar.google.com, Google searching is integrated right into the FireFox interface, and can be added or removed at your leisure.

For those of you who live to customize the look of WinAmp, www.winamp.com, and other skinable applications, FireFox has answered the call. Included is the ability to download any number of customized skins.

The extent of the skin offering increases by the day, enabling you to choose the icon and color scheme that best suits your needs.

If you're like me, the bells and whistles associated with a certain program are all good and swell, but it doesn't always translate into a superior experience. For me, the advantage of FireFox can be summed up in two words - tabbed browsing.

Tabbed browsing is a means by which separate web pages that would typically be opened in additional browser windows are nested within a single window leaving only one instance of FireFox in your taskbar.

You can open new tabs from the toolbar, right-click on hyperlinks and tell FireFox to "Open in a New Tab" or select a set of links from you favorites list to be opened in separate tabs. The economy afforded by this feature is reason enough to make the switch.

Once you have used tabbed browsing, you'll wonder how you ever browsed without it.

I would be doing myself and all of you an injustice if I did not point out what you'll be giving up by switching to FireFox, though luckily the answer is very little. FireFox will load almost any site you come across with the exception of a few MS specific sites like Windows/Office Update and SharePoint Portal sites. You may also notice some prompts informing you that your browser is not officially supported by the site you are attempting to access. Such is the case with DrexelOne, one.drexel.edu, but if you click "continue", the DrexelOne site loads up fine, and I have yet to discover a feature that doesn't work with FireFox.

A handful of MS web technologies are intentionally blocked by FireFox. The most well-known feature is MS ActiveX. The blocking of ActiveX was a security decision by Mozilla who knows of the numerous security hazards that ActiveX presents - ActiveX blocking prevents the loading of Spyware and other malicious code. Mozilla has united with other Internet players (Apple, Opera, Macromedia and Sun Microsystems) to formulate a new, more secure set of development standards for web applications for submission to the World Wide Web Consortium, www.w3c.com.

The switch to FireFox is simple, and the automatic importing of IE favorites into the FireFox bookmarks list helps speed the process along. It's up to you to decide if FireFox is the solution for your Internet browsing needs.

There is little reason not to at least try it out - free, secure and able to run on a variety of platforms alongside IE. Even if it's not FireFox, do treat yourself to the features of alternative browsers, not to mention their security advantages by seeking safety in the "lack" of numbers and abundance of usable design choices.

Paul Corkery is a pre-junior majoing in information systems and just found another IE security alert.

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