Internet Explorer gets Finnish Thumbs Down

Not for the first time does Internet Explorer users got a warning from a government organization. US-CERT released similar warnings in June this year, following a malware attack, which affected Internet Explorer… the most used web browser in the World today.

This time the Finnish authorities (Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority) have urged the Finland people to move on to alternate browsers at least until the time Microsoft releases a patch for a newly discovered flaw. IFRAME exploit also knows as the Bofra exploit was used earlier this week to infect user’s computers who were surfing on recognized websites through advertisement banners hosted by a third party.

Microsoft’s recently released Service Pack 2 of their Windows XP operating system is reportedly safe from this exploit but other XP and Win2k machines are vulnerable. Microsoft has yet not announced any deadline for releasing the update for these operating systems.

The National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC) has already released instructions to the users to update to SP2 and keep the antivirus updated to prevent any security related problems. Looks like Microsoft now have government organizations in addition to user communities complaining about lack of updates and patches.