A Small Victory

You know you never hear statements like:

"You get my IE when you pry in from my cold dead hands"... Poor Microsoft always getting picked on.

Plus FireFox has crazy cool extentions like stock tickers and webdeveloping tools ... WTF

And the Abe Vigoda Dead or Alive extension.

(he's alive as of right now)

Just out of curiosity... did you get hacked, or was it a ghost in your templates?

Unfortunately, I think alot of people might be checking your blog at work, where they have no choice in browsers.

FireFox rocks my socks off!

Firefox is like a trusty old blanket or sweater that keeps you cozy and warm on those cold mornings.

And it stays crunchy even in milk!

(I know someone working on a Terri Schiavo equivalent to the Abe Vigoda status thingy)

Unfortunately, I think alot of people might be checking your blog at work, where they have no choice in browsers.

Which is why it's good to be the IT Department - I am the browser police. You've gotta love free software that works better than the heavy markest share products.

(I didn't see the virus until I checked ASV from home under my wife's user account.)

Firefox gave me a kidney, bless 'im!

And Firefox makes you run faster and jump higher, just like my trusty PF Flyers!

And it keeps you from getting VD's or acid indigestion!

Geeky question:

The only reason I don't use Firefox is that I can't log in as different users to the same site in multiple windows.

Is there a way to turn off this feature?

What's that FireFox? Little Timmy? Stuck in a ravine!?

i LOVE the Abe Vigoda dead or alive extension! i'm surprised they haven't done a Michael Jackson guilty/not guilty/either way, he's creepy extension.

"Unfortunately, I think alot of people might be checking your blog at work, where they have no choice in browsers."

Which is why its so cool that firefox can run off a usb stick without installing!

JFH,

This thread at MozillaZine is the only thing I could find that might help. In summary, you may need to create a second Firefox profile.

Unfortunately, "the man" enforces the use of IE at the office. At home, it's a whole nother story.

I´m using it as I type this :) Love it!

Michele --

My wife and I each wrote Hosting Matters to ask about their hosting plans / bandwidth etc.

No response.

Then on Steve Green's advice, I emailed Stacy Tabb and asked her if she could pass along some contact info.

No response.

How exactly do you get through to Hosting Matters? Is there a special code or set of handsignals I need to learn?

Contact information for Hosting Matters is listed on their website: http://support.hostmatters.com/

Not to mention their plans/bandwidth/tech/etc is listed on their site.

Better prices than I've found elsewhere. Just started an account with them, and so far love it.

Well, except for the small thing of not being able to get through to my site for about five minutes yesterday. But that happens so rarely...or so I've noticed...that it really doesn't make a difference to me.

Tabbed browsing rules. However I'm still trying to figure out why Moz stopped running on my home PC. Just out of the blue, the thing doesn't work anymore.

Poop.

I'd love to install Firefox on my computer - I tried to but it wouldn't install for some reason. That last automaticaly installed MS Windows security update screwed up my computer so bad that I can't install anything until have 300 hours to reformat my hard drive and reinstall. UGH.

Another alternative is Maxthon (formerly MyIE2). It uses the IE rendering engine, so no worries about sites that don't display correctly, windows update, etc. and gives you all the security, popup blocking, ad-blockin, tabbed-browsing, and the plug-in abilities of firefox.

Wendell -

"IE Rendering Engine"...hehehe...that's part of the problem. Not so much from a security angle but from a standards conpliant standpoint. IE simply doesn't respect certian CSS techniques viewed by W3C as "standard". This results in the page not displaying properly in IE. Unfortunately due to the ubiquity of IE it's the other browsers that are standards compliant that get the "it doesn't work right in X" rant. As developers create hacks to make IE do certain things with CSS they start deviating from the standards.

let me get this straight, IE let a virus get on the ASV website hosted by Apache/Linux?

I don't understand what IE has to do with virus/trojan/malware being progated via a web page. Granted the holes in IE are troublesome but providing the source of the page and -- and it's advertisers, I notice some iframes scattered about -- is sound, I don't see what a users browser choice has to do with anything.

Because, as I understand it, the particular virus exploits a security hole in IE to get through to the user.

In this case, it changed my home page from Google to some page I've never seen before and added a couple of links to other sites onto my favorites. No other apparent damage.

Good that it's been taken care of.

Michele, I get that part... but, and it's a big one, the particular nasty that is exploiting IE has to exist on the server, in a directory that is public. That is the responsibility of the site owner or whomever is being paid to maintain it.

Blaming this on IE is akin to someone saying that their Flash memory card will work fine in Minoltas, Canons and Kodaks but is seriously going to fuck up your Nikon.

Here's how this particular bugger works according to Symantec:

"By embedding a specially crafted URL in a Web page and having that URL refer to a CHM file containing an HTML file with scripts in it, an attacker could force the user who views the Web page with a vulnerable version of Internet Explorer to download and execute files."

Now, consider what a blog is and how easy it is to include links like this in comments and trackbacks.

If that link points to a file local to your workstation, like this(points to your C:\windows\iis6.log file)...or a CHM file...then it doesn't matter what the host of the blog is running for an Operating System because the link is referencing YOUR harddrive. HostingMatters is simply a middleperson...unwitting middleperson to the hack which is facilitated by IE.

The second link doesn't work in Firefox...at least not on my install. Welcome to the shady side of the web. All kinds of nastiness can be had with links. If Michele gives me permission I might could show some of the nastiness that is possible. ;) Might do it on my site tonight just for alittle fun. Click my name to get to my site. Gimme alittle bit to work something up. ;)

harumph then...2nd link is dead in IE as well. Stop by Confessions later tonight and I'll try and demonstrate some of the nastiness....in a not so nasty way.

Sorry Michele...I don't mean to pimp myself but folks were wondering how it was possible that an IE exploit could impact a Linux server.

I put something on my site that demonstrates alittle about how something like this could happen. Stop by if yer interested.

So does Avant Browser. Plus ABSOLUTELY no pop-ups. Ever. Had it for 8 months now. Nary a one.

You get my IE when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

... And, yes. I mean it.

You get my IE when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

... And, yes. I mean it.

Okay, Bill ... I mean, "Shaun." I don't think anyone here wants your IE anyhow.