Re: A dollar to switch from IE to Firefox?

Stimpy <stimpy1997uk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 6/12/05 10:35, "James Dore" wrote:
>
> > Stimpy <stimpy1997uk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >> On 5/12/05 16:51, "James Dore" wrote:
> >>
> >>> Stimpy <stimpy1997uk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On 5/12/05 07:39, "David Kennedy" wrote: > > So, no different than
> >>>>all the donkeys who now tell me I'm not using > Internet Exploder. > >
> >>>>And at least with a variety of Moz installed Pop ups etc. are your
> >>>>choice.
> >>>>
> >>>> IE 6 has a perfectly acceptable pop-up blocker
> >>>
> >>> You mean it crashes and lets in all the warez? Yes, quite acceptable!
> >>
> >> Ho-hum... There's a fine line between being an enthusiast and being an
> >> uninformed bigot
> >
> > And then there's being a Uni sysadmin that has to deal with over a
> > thousand of the wretched things five days a week. Once I switch the
> > users to firefox, I tend not to have to fix their laptops again. Term
> > has finished now, but boy, I'm really looking forward to january, and
> > dealing with the crap that has been installed over christmas.
> >
> > Or to put it another way:
> >
> > Admin workstations using Firefox exlcusively through enforced hiding of
> > Internet Explorer: 54. Admin workstations infected with spyware: Zero.
> > Bear in mind also that these are Windows XP service pack 1 machines, as
> > SP2 is does not yet play nicely with our Zenworks Workstation management
> > agent. Our admin workstations are missing several patches that renders
> > them apparently less secure than XP SP2, but without the use of IE,
> > we've avoided the problem. They get the same educational messages as the
> > students in userland, otherwise.
> >
> > Out in userland I enforce installation of SP2 with firewall policies
> > (they get scanned by Nessusd which forces an SP2 install if it's not
> > present) and yet even with all the latest security patches, firewalls,
> > IE popup blockers and such, the cluless still get their machines broken
> > by spyware.
>
> But does it "crash and let it all the warez"? Viruses, trojans and
> spyware, maybe, but I've never seen warez being spontaneously loaded onto
> unsuspecting machines.

Lucky you - other colleges who run MS-SQL server have been infected with
BackOrifice and SAdminD via holes in IE, turning those servers into
nodes serving up illegal downloads via ftp or irc. I saw this first hand
once it had been discovered, as it happened to one of my good friends'
SQL servers and once inside his network, to his IIS box as well.

Maybe "crash and let in all the malware" would have been a more accurate
description, but the accusation still stands...

--
james dore
new college
it-support@new/james.dore@new
http://www.new.ox.ac.uk
.

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