PureBasic Forums - English

IE won't run on my system... nor firefox or opera or seamonkey (Mozilla) but Chrome, Netscape and Kamelon do???

If I open the system manager window after I click IE I see it running, but there is no taskbar listing and no window anywhere!

It sttarted when I uninstalled IE8B1 and attempted to go back to IE7... I have installed the latest IE8 as of this point... no workee!

I am loving Netscape at the moment!

Oh Gheesh! only .02% of the internet for a browser, but 100% of the internet was affected for the recent dns cache poisoning explot that had been present since the dawn of the internet we know today. There is always going to be someone that will try to find something, there is always going to be some weakness in code somewhere that someone will exploit.

in my humble opinion, IE is too DUMB to be evil....

IE is the George Bush of browsers... which completely refutes Kaeru Gaman's argument!

Rook Zimbabwe wrote:IE is the George Bush of browsers... which completely refutes Kaeru Gaman's argument!

a shoes browser is comming ? :p

I personally don't see whay people have such a hard time with IE. I use it, have been using it for years and not had any issues with it. I've used firefox and netscape and Opera and mozilla, and I always find IE just as comfortable and reliable to use as any of the others. People complain that IE won't run on their systems, yet i've never had one time on any computer i've used or own that IE did not run. I just don't understand it.

Trojans and Malware from script kiddies attacking IE for no real reason... If said kiddies were so freaking smart they would amaze themselves by trojaning and malwareing on CRApple instead! Less competition!

Well, you know the reason why IE and the windows OS seems so vunerable don't you?

Its simply because Windows and IE are on almost over 80% of the computers in the world. Then there is the fact that Microsoft exposes every API they use, then the fact that Microsoft programming related products are plentiful for free in some cases straight from MS, then there is the fact that anyone who searches on google for something has a good chance of finding the code they want to take advantage of a weakness. In short; with the code available, with the tools available, and with a much larger target of windows so plentiful to begin with, it makes sense in an easy manner for anyone to target MS products specifically simply because they have the best chance of sucess in having their attacks or malware suceed.

Then there is the human nature part; A person who wants to cause trouble to begin with will seek ways to cause that trouble, plain and simple. Since its also human nature to take the path of least resistance, that path leads them right back to MS products for their OS and browsers and other applications. Its the path of least resistance due to the other things i've mentioned being avaiable to them in the form of ready-to-go-code, well documented and updated API's, and a larger target group then any other producer has, and plentiful products available for them to use in their efforts. And...there are those who will want to intentionally cause harm, not just a little trouble, but will seek to actually cause harm for some reason or another with the reasons usually turning out to be either financial or self-perceived-righteous-motives or personal agenda based on misinformation or self serving interest. And when they want to cause harm for the most they go for the biggest target available which just happens to be MS products. They know already that people form a sort of personal attachment to their computers in some way and that people see all the stuff about internet crime and stealing data and identity theft, and they know that if their exploits are made public they stand the greatest chance of inducing fear and paranoia in some way to some extent to the greates number of people by simply targeting MS products.

And then there is the human nature part of self gratification. You'll notice when a vunlerability in a MS product is exploited its all over the news, every one gripes about it, It even affects their stock prices in some cases, and its made a big deal and becomes as highly visible as possible all over the internet and in the real world. This makes things very visible and as a result it provides gratification to the person or persons that cause the trouble by exploiting the vunlerability in the first place. Some people who crave that gratification will go on to stay in this immature state of being for many years and go on to cause further trouble and make it a life mission to do so. They love it when the results of their exploits are plastered all over the internet, on the 11 o'clock news, and in the newspaper, they become famous in a way and get the attention they crave. These people generally would not be able to live a normal life completly as this dark side of them will always in some way be influencing their life and how they interact with the real world. All hackers, be it white hat or black hat, in some way seek the attention and gratification that their actions result in, some are just better at real life then the others and don't crave it like those that produce things that exploit vunlerabilities on purpose for trouble or harm. It could be anything that causes this craving, mommy issues, daddy issues, environmental and society factors, chemical imbalances, money or family issues, anything at all. Then throw in a self-perceived-righteous-motive for example, and you have someone who will claim that if MS fixed their stuff they would not have been able to exploit the vunlerability as a justification for their actions. Every actual hacker that has been caught to date for some sensational hacking has had some real problems with dealing with real life and were basically socially retarded and all of them to some degree offered some self-perceived sense of right and wrong as an excuse for their actions that was far removed from reality.

There are probably just as many potential vunlerabilities in Apple OS and products and other browsers, its just that the people who exploit these things simply go for the larger target which is Microsoft because they are mostly cowards who are afraid if they spend time exploiting the other products the effect will not be as great and thus the gratification reward not as satisfying. If all the other browsers or OS's completly documented all the API's they used AND were as widely used as those things from MS, and suitable code and tools were available, you would be seeing the same effect on the other products as you see now on MS products.

> you know the reason why IE and the windows OS seems so vunerable don't you? Its
> simply because Windows and IE are on almost over 80% of the computers in the world

I've read a lot of sites that say the opposite: that Windows is coded like crap and that's
why it's so vulnerable. I must say I tend to believe them. They discussed market share
of IE and all that and it was concluded that share wasn't a factor for attacks. <Shrugs>.

Yes share is a factor simply because the opportunity or a larger target is more plentiful. If share, as your calling it, wasn't a factor then all browsers and all OS's from any producer would be exploited in some way and you would be reading about that also. Its simply eaisier to hit a larger target. There may be crappy coding, but thats not an excuse for downright criminal or anti-social behavior. Yes, a lot of sites say that its because of crappy coding, but its just more of the same, once someone does something that exploits some vunlerabilitie someone on the internet will pick it up and adopt the excuse of crappy coding as their own and write all sorts of stuff about it which only serves to enforce the concept that the coding was crappy to the masses. You know as well as i do how fast something travels around the internet when its bad news, then throw in a ton of opinions and you end up with pseudo-fact that people can't distingush from reality. So no, its really not the opposite, they are just seizing on specific things and making them more visible with the numerous opinions when it affects the greater target audience. Look at it this way, if only one person read what these other places say and offered an opinion then you'd probably not pay attention to it, but when lots of people read and chime in it creates a general 'collective conscience' effect which seems to support the opinions simply because of the numbers who participate. It still comes back to the larger target audience. So yeah, a lot are going to say the opposite for a number of reasons, but in all of it, you have to place in context what they are saying and why. So while there might be crappy code, most of these other places don't really bother to say anything until a vunlerability is exploited...so if they were so expert in their opinion in the first place and knew that the code was crappy then why didn't they start talking about it before it got exploited? They didn't because it wasn't sensational yet enough for them to say anything, and even here we come back to a basic human trait in that if its not something we can use in some way we tend to ignore it. This isn't to say that there are some people who offer opinion on what they consider crappy code in a more professional aspect, however, most places offer their opinions based upon the sensational value of the exploit and i'd venture to guess that the majority of people offering their opinions are simply regurgitating what they have read elsewhere and taken it as fact when it might not have been.

So while there may be crappy coding thats not an excuse for downright criminal or anti-social behavior, and thats what it comes down to; the person or persons that exploited the vunlerability for some reason or other and thats how it got noticed and the reasons they did it while many still comes down to a big target and human nature. The fact that they did the exploit and they or others claim its because of crappy coding is no excuse, they knew what they were or are doing and continued even knowing its against the law or social norms for expected behavior, or it just wasn't right, yet their sense of wrong doing and need for that gratification fix of "LoL, I hacked you." and the attention it gets is just too much to ignore and their sense of society norms and expected behavior is skewed or missing. Almost everything these hacker creeps do and screw up, I gurantee you they can give you an an excuse as to why they did it and thats a sure sign of immaturity and lack of self esteem - having to make excuses to justify your actions when your actions were plain wrong that anyone in their right mind would have known was wrong. No, their excuse of crappy code just doesn't cut it, and echoing it around the 'net doesn't mean its true and only means everyone has an opinion that contributes to the overall clutter pseudo-fact most prevelant on the internet. After all you can't say "Officer, yes i saw the traffic moving and saw the other cars coming but the red light wasn't working and i knew i didn't have the right of way, but i decided to go through the intersection anyway and thats the reason i got into the accident. But because the light wasn't working, even though it is a traffic law for me to yield right of way to on coming traffic, it wsn't my fault." because the fact remains that you still didn't yield the right of way and still should have known better. The same for the hackers, they should have known better, because a condition exists doesn't justify the actions to exploit it.

People like this will always be with us, they will always exploit everything they can and have an excuse for it. They will always seek to cause the greatest amount of sensational trouble or harm to the greatest numbers the eaisiest way they can, and then offer excuses as to why they did it and believe their selfs justified in some way; and that is exactly one of the signs of a person with low self esteem and immaturity who is a coward.

I can gurantee you that if someone were to start a rumor that the firefox browser for example had a vunlerability that was exploited and was responsible for the, as the article incorrectly and falsely put it, "10,000 web sites" being affected, if someone were to put that rumor out today to the right places; I can gurantee you that tomorrow you would be reading about it all over the internet in the same types of articles with the same types of opinion experts giving the same expert opinions and it would be what everyone would be pointing to as 'fact'. The same people who claim crappy coding now in MS products would be claiming the same 'crappy coding' thing about firefox. Its just the way the internet works, with its very forgiving nature of non-verification just because someone else says it.

I know that INTERNET EXPLORER still exists on your system even if removed because that is how Windows Update works!

Which also freaks me out because I can't see mine open on the taskbar or in windows, only on SYSTEM MANAGER!

I'm a bit confused by the article

As many as 10,000 websites have been compromised since the vulnerability was discovered, he said.

What does that have to do with IE ?

idle;

It doesn't have anything to do with it. It just makes it sound more sensational and makes any issue bigger to say it that way then it really is. Its called "Sensationalistic Journalism", and takes a relatively small, inconsequentional, or boring subject, and pumps it full of opinions that don't matter and emotional and provoking statements that no one can prove or dispute but which seem to support the main subject but really don't, to fluff the piece out so there will be something big enough to put on the page. As with anything having to do with any vunlerability with any MS product, it has become the norm to make it as sensational as possible and by doing so imply that the sky is falling and the world is doomed all because of the "evil MS empire"

the story is about as useful as telling people

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrQUWUfm ... re=related