New critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer

You'd think that the world's largest and richest software company could write software that doesn't currently need to patch "critical flaws"? Wrong. There is even an event called "Microsoft Tuesday" when they release the month's new batches of patches. But they've excelled themselves this time: Microsoft has taken the rare step of warning about a serious security flaw it hasn't fixed yet. The vulnerability affects Internet Explorer users whose computers run Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. It can allow hackers to remotely take control of victims' machines. The victims don't need to do anything to get infected, just visit a website that's been hacked. Security experts say criminals have been attacking the vulnerability for nearly a week. Thousands of sites have been hacked to serve up malicious software that exploits the vulnerability. People are drawn to these sites by clicking a link in spam e-mail. The so-called "zero day" vulnerability affects a part of software used to play video. The problem arises from the way the software interacts with Internet Explorer, which opens a hole for hackers to tunnel into. Microsoft urges vulnerable users to disable the problematic part of its software, which can be done from Microsoft's website, while the company works on a "patch" - or software fix - for the problem.
On the subject of browsers, I should note that Firefox has just released version 3.5, which has some important new features, and is supposed to load faster.

Restoring browser defaults

According to reports, a glitch in Internet Explorer 6 forced the new Microsoft search engine Bing onto users as the default search engine. Even when users manually altered their preferences, Bing came back. Micosoft says it has now fixed the problem, but similar problems have occurred before.
When one of the early versions of Windows 7 was released a month or so back, IE8 was automatically pushed as the default browser. This caused competitors Opera and Firefox to complain. If that has happened to you, and you want to reset Firefox or Opera as your default, there is a solution.
1. Close Internet Explorer if it's running, then start Firefox.
2. Click Tools, Options, then click the Advanced icon in the Options toolbar.
3. Click the General tab if it's not already selected, then make sure "Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup" is enabled.
4. Click Check Now, then confirm that you want to make Firefox your default browser.
5. Click OK and you're done.

Firefox v. IE8 - which is better?

Just to show that it's not biased, PC World has an article today comparing Firefox with Internet Explorer 8. It's a well-reasoned article, in which the author tends to come down on the side of IE8, although acknowledging Firefox has advantages in some areas, and admitting he runs both every day. One thing the article does not mention - and one of the biggest selling points for me - is the huge range of add-ons that have been written for Firefox by open-source developers all around the world. This is something that Microsoft cannot hope to emulate. It's a strange reversal of the Microsoft v. Macintosh battle. One of the strengths of Windows is the immense range of third party software that has been written for it for which there is no equivalent in the Apple world. If these third-party programs are helping to keep Microsoft well in front, surely the same is true for Firefox?

Microsoft told to unbundle IE

According to a story in today's NZ Herald, the European Union has told Microsoft to unbundle the web browser Internet Explorer from the Windows operating system. Among other things, there are claims that the software is badly bloated, and web pages written primarily with IE in mind display badly in other browsers, such as Firefox and Opera. That is certainly true, but the complaints don't touch on what to me is an even more significant problem. If you want to download any software - particularly system updates - from the Microsoft website, the site will not allow you to do so with any browser but IE. That to me is real abuse of your position of power.