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If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

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Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#11

Post by JonnieCache »

NathanKP wrote: post #2

Better yet, why not install Google Chrome and replace their Internet Explorer link with a link to Google Chrome? Just make the link have IE's icon so that they don't wonder where the internet has gone. They will marvel about how you "made their internet faster." I like to make it even easier for people by making two different links: one called "Internet" which takes them to Google, the other called "Email" which take…

My tip is to simply install an IE-simulating theme for firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4129/

Then install the following extension to change the titlebars: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/57/?id=57

Finally a bit of desktop shortcut renaming and icon-customisation, and mother will never be any the wiser!

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#12

Post by magamiako »

People are overblowing the dangerous nature of this exploit. Keep in mind that by default, IE runs in Protected Mode in both Vista and 7. As long as you're not disabling UAC (like a retard, and I challenge any person who thinks they know anything about computer security to argue otherwise), you're protected against this attack.

*Disclaimer: UAC, like any security technology, is not perfect.

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#13

Post by vinhboy »

Saw this bug on a security researcher's tweet couple of weeks ago: http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2010/Dec/110

Today found a great write up about how to exploit it here: http://www.breakingpointsystems.com/community/blog/ie-vulner...

I have no idea what any of it means. If anyone has any good links that teaches newbie concepts to these things, please do share. Thanks.

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#14

Post by vinhboy »

lgeek wrote: post #3

Actually my parents are using a Debian box with Chromium. I found it is a lot easier to manage remotely than a Windows box; it's really low maintenance; they won't grab malware and the Gnome desktop can be really dumbed down - I only left the window switcher, shortcuts for chromium and skype on the panel and on the desktop, time and date, volume control.

If you ever do a write up or have screenshots of this setup, I would love to see it.

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#15

Post by stevefink »

As a developer who's deeply tied into web technologies, I cannot help but grin at this post. Unfortunately, I know where this is going to lead, however. My mother visits a site that embeds WMV-based videos for her Russian TV shows. It was not until she purchased a new MacBook that I realized that this was the site she visits 90% of the time she's on the Internet. I thought installing Flip4Mac would solve her crisis, and it partially did, video and audio came in through Firefox as expected. With that said, seeking within the video does not work as naturally well as it does in IE. In fact, it doesn't work at all. The end result was I purchased my mother VMWare Fusion 3, a copy of Windows XP, and ended up having to tutor her on the usage of a virtual machine, the mechanics between how to seamlessly work with the two operating systems, etc. I still get daily tech support calls that eat up a lot of my personal time, now not only for the MacBook, but for VMWare Fusion, Windows XP and IE/Safari usage.

The web developer in me loathes IE for obvious reasons which will not be reiterated here for the billionth time. The son in me kind of wishes my mother just had a simple netbook running windows xp, IE, and nothing else.

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#16

Post by Xuzz »

JonnieCache wrote: post #11
NathanKP wrote: post #2

Better yet, why not install Google Chrome and replace their Internet Explorer link with a link to Google Chrome? Just make the link have IE's icon so that they don't wonder where the internet has gone. They will marvel about how you "made their internet faster." I like to make it even easier for people by making two different links: one called "Internet" which takes them to Google, the other called "Email" which take…

My tip is to simply install an IE-simulating theme for firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4129/ Then install the following extension to change the titlebars: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/57/?id=57 Finally a bit of desktop shortcut renaming and icon-customisation, and mother will never be any the wiser!

It's kinda sad... but I've actually done exactly that before.

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#17

Post by eru »

stevefink wrote: post #15

As a developer who's deeply tied into web technologies, I cannot help but grin at this post. Unfortunately, I know where this is going to lead, however. My mother visits a site that embeds WMV-based videos for her Russian TV shows. It was not until she purchased a new MacBook that I realized that this was the site she visits 90% of the time she's on the Internet. I thought installing Flip4Mac would solve her crisis,…

You can install Windows XP on a Macbook.

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#18

Post by w1ntermute »

trotsky wrote: post #7

Current 0-day or no, you'll be doing much more good in the long run if you replace the pre-installed acrobat reader with a 3rd party viewer.

It's not even preinstalled, so it shouldn't be that difficult. Foxit and Sumatra PDF are both great choices.

Re: If you're visiting family over the holiday, turn off Internet Explorer.

#20

Post by masklinn »

stevefink wrote: post #15

As a developer who's deeply tied into web technologies, I cannot help but grin at this post. Unfortunately, I know where this is going to lead, however. My mother visits a site that embeds WMV-based videos for her Russian TV shows. It was not until she purchased a new MacBook that I realized that this was the site she visits 90% of the time she's on the Internet. I thought installing Flip4Mac would solve her crisis,…

> The end result was I purchased my mother VMWare Fusion 3, a copy of Windows XP, and ended up having to tutor her on the usage of a virtual machine, the mechanics between how to seamlessly work with the two operating systems, etc. I still get daily tech support calls that eat up a lot of my personal time, now not only for the MacBook, but for VMWare Fusion, Windows XP and IE/Safari usage.

Just enabling Unity for MSIE doesn't work well enough?

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