The latest internet nasty uses a security flaw in Microsoft IIS to install malicious code on an otherwise trusted server.  When some fool using Internet Explorer (but I repeat myself) visits what should be a trustworthy website, the code installs a sniffer program that looks for banking passwords and credit card information and sends it off to someplace in Russia.  Don’t look to Microsoft for a fix.  By the time they get around to doing something the damage will have been done.

The only solution is to stop using Internet Explorer.  In a business environment, you can enforce an Internet Explorer ban very easily by using a proxy such as Squid and adding a few simple rules to the configuration file:

First, we allow accessing the mozilla website so they can get a good replacement browser.  I had to add one other website to the allow list because it absolutely will not run with anything but IE (it was a financial website used by my company).  You can add as many exceptions as you wish, but remember the latest exploit targets normally trusted websites.

ERR_BAD_BROWSER is an error screen that will be displayed when anyone attempts to use Internet Explorer.  My error messages simply says that IE is banned for security reasons and tells them to use Mozilla FireFox with the appropriate link.

I also banned IE at home and made the same change to the proxy configuration.  I added LimeWire to the banned browser list because the child ignored my demand to stop downloading pirated music.  If she gives me a list of legal download URLs I will consider adding them as exceptions.

There was one unexpected side-effect.  Some plugins for AIM no longer work because they use an IE dll (dynamic link library).  This has the same security implications as using IE so I’m leaving everything as-is.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 27th, 2004 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Geek Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.