A few hours ago Microsoft released a security update for Internet Explorer 6-8 because of a security issue, which had a rating of “Critical”, but those with versions 9 and 10 will be pleased to know that they will be unaffected by this latest security issue.

According to Microsoft there is a vulnerability that could allow a malicious hacker to be able to execute code onto someone’s computer running IE 6-8 remotely giving them the same access as the user. There had already been a similar issue and a fix was recently released to address the issue, but this critical update is said to eradicate the issue once and for all.

It’s recommended that you download and install the update right away by way of the usual process. Don’t worry if you feel you were left vulnerable because this security issue only targeted a small percentage of IE users, but we would advise users not to get too complacent and still install the update, even if the risk is low. However, knowing that a hacker could gain the same rights as the user is considered a pretty high risk to me.

There have already been several websites that have been compromised and as such had spread the malware, but as a way to resolve the issue before Microsoft were able to offer a fix users found themselves downloading Internet Explorer 9-10 before they were ready to do so.

The only worry that we have with this whole thing is how the exploit has been around since early December, which means that this exploit has been left wide open without a patch.

Microsoft’s default web browser has been losing market share for a while now, but this had halted for one month recently. Now a report here is stating the slide has now continued during December, and if the trend continues it could have less than a fifty percent share by March.

Last month Internet Explorer lost eight-tenths of a percent to finish up with a share of 51.9 percent, and according to Net Applications is a drop of over seven percent during 2011. The service most benefiting from IE’s loses is Google’s Chrome browser, which finished on a record high of 19.1 percent.

It is thought Chrome should break through the twenty percent barrier in the next month or two as more users defect from IE. Microsoft has been seemly unworried about the slide of IE market share, and instead made a point of IE9’s performance on Windows 7. The company feels this is all that matters, and Roger Capriotti of IE said that IE9 will soon overtake IE8 on Windows 7.

Taking into account all operating systems IE9 had an 11.5 percent share during December, which was an increase of 1.2 percent. Microsoft’s most popular browser remained IE8 on 27.3 percent of all those used. Microsoft recently began upgrading older versions of their browser automatically, but it may still not be enough to stop users trying alternatives.

Chrome has seen its figures boosted by users leaving both IE and Mozilla’s Firefox during 2011, which meant a rise of 8.8 percent for the year. During 2011 Firefox lost 1.9 percent finishing on a record low of 21.8 percent for the year.

The way things are going Chrome will gain second place from Firefox by March, and Apple’s Safari browser remained at five percent for December. Opera enjoyed its best increase of the year during December and finished on 1.7 percent.

Have you recently started to use a new web browser?

For years Microsoft has been rolling out Windows updates to ensure that software is up-to-date and secure, however the process of download and installing new versions of Internet Explorer has sometimes seemed long-winded and clunky, especially when you can install an alternative browser within a couple of minutes.

Even those who despise Microsoft Internet Explorer will admit that IE9 closed the gap massively with Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome when it comes to browsing speed and layout, according to the Windows Team Blog Microsoft’s web browser will soon update itself automatically just like its major rivals. This means that people using IE will be able to rest assured that they are running the most up-to-date and secure version of the software.

Microsoft claim that the automatic updating procedure will be as fast and simple as possible, apparently now you wont see notifications telling you exactly what is happening, instead the upgrade will take place and no changes will be made to a user’s home page, default browser or search provider. This will in-turn benefit developers as more consumer’s will be using the most recent browser build, that said a user can choose to block automatic upgrades if they wish.

We think that this is a huge step in the right direction for Microsoft and it should further ensure that Windows users are safe from malicious software. Apparently Microsoft will take a measured approach and begin the automatic upgrades in Australia and Brazil in January, it will affect Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 users. You can find out more about this news here.

Are you happy with this planned change?

NSS Labs ran active tests across six popular browsers, the test involved testing 615 malicious URLs over 19 days, both Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 and Internet Explorer 8 outperformed Opera 11, Firefox 4, Chrome 10 and Safari 5 massively. Apparently IE9 caught 92% of live threats, whilst IE8 caught 90%, Safari 5 caught 13%, Chrome 10 caught 13%, Firefox 4 caught 13% and Opera 11 caught 5%, this sounds worrying, however as ZDNet point out the findings are not necessarily accurate as they do not take into account security add-ons, browser protection features, and client-side vulnerabilities. That said you can’t ignore just how well Microsoft’s browsers done in the tests.

You can see a full details by checking out the documentation which NSS Labs released, what impressed us the most was the fact that if you used Internet Explorer 9 with both Application Reputation and SmartScreen enabled it resulted in the browser getting a 100% over-time protection rating and a 100% URL block rate.

If SmartScreen is not enabled for you simply open up IE9, click on the gear icon in the top right hand corner (tools), click safety and then select click “Turn on SmartScreen Filter, a box will show to confirm your actions (see below). By the looks of things enabling this auto enables Application Reputation.

Social malware is a massive threat in today’s world as so many people use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, what also doesn’t help is the fact that URL shortening services can sometimes hide the true nature of a link you are clicking on. We think that everyone should use a Link Scanner if they are worried about social malware, also remember that if a link sounds too good to be true it probably is. If you see links saying “See who viewed your profile” or “See who poked me the most” on Facebook we would strongly advise against clicking them.

AVG LinkScanner is a great free tool which will scan links for you in real time, however don’t just think that a Link Scanner will keep you safe, you should also be using up-to-date antivirus software, a firewall and a bit of common sense. Remember to check out this PDF File if you are really interested in how different browsers cope with social malware threats.

Our writers at Product-Reviews mainly use Google Chrome, Apple Safari or Mozilla Firefox, this is mainly due to the fact that previous Internet Explorer releases seemed sluggish in comparison, however it has to be said that Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 is by far the greatest IE version yet.

The features which Microsoft seem most happy with include IE9′s new simplified user interface, its hardware acceleration capabilities and its HTML5 support, you find out more about IE9′s top features here.

If you are using a previous version of Internet Explorer we strongly recommend that you download Internet Explorer 9 for its enhanced security, however you need to be running either Windows Vista or Windows 7, Windows XP and other operating systems are not supported. If you are running a supported OS you download IE9 here.

Below we have added a poll to get some feedback from our readers, feel free to answer the poll question and share your opinions in the comments section.

[poll id="323"]

Before following this guide please be aware that the process will result in you losing your cookies, temporary internet files, saved passwords and browsing history, but let’s face it if Internet Explorer is not working for you this is a small price to pay to get back on the internet, please also follow our previous guide beforehand and uninstall most if not all internet toolbars.

If you are running Internet Explorer 6 you should open up the browser and then click on “Tools” and then select “Internet Options”, a new window will show with multiple tabs across the top, firstly click on the “Advanced” tab and then click on “Restore Defaults”, now click on the “Programs” tab and click “Reset Web Settings”, next click on the “General” tab and click on both “Delete Cookies” and “Delete Files”. Throughout the process Windows may ask you to confirm your actions, click yes, once complete close Internet Explorer and re-open it, hopefully this will have fixed your problems with IE6.

For Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 the process is quite similar, however a little bit easier, firstly open Internet Explorer, and then click “Tools”, from the drop-down menu select “Internet Options”, a new window should appear, click on the “Advanced” tab and then click “Reset”, this will reset all of your Internet Explorer settings back to their defaults. Once complete click on the “General” tab and under Browsing History click “Delete” a new window will show, here select “Delete All”. Like with the IE 6 guide you may be prompted to confirm your actions, accept any warnings you see.

This guide will not fix all problems, however in my experience it will help greatly, we would love to hear if this guide helped you, if so let us know in the comments section below.

Firstly if you are running Internet Explorer 6 you should seriously consider downloading a newer version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as more web standards are supported and newer versions are more secure, if you understand all of this but want to stick with IE6 this fix guide will still work, however you have to be aware that you are more susceptible to malware and viruses.

You can download IE7 here and IE8 here, alternatively you can download the IE9 beta here.

There are hundreds if not 1000s of toolbars out there, and some people end up with multiple installed on one computer, this dramatically reduces the size of the viewable browsing area (you can see what I mean here), dramatically affect your overall browsing experience and even make you more susceptible to infections, therefore I strongly recommend getting rid of some (if not all) toolbars.

Most toolbars can be uninstalled via your computer’s control panel, to access the control panel simply click start and then click control panel, you now want to find “add / remove programs” or if you are running Vista or Windows 7 you need to find “uninstall a program” (which may be under the “Programs” sub-category), once here your computer should show you a list of all of the installed programs, if there are programs with the word “toolbar” in their names you should uninstall it, however read the next paragraph before doing so.

In my opinion there are four great toolbars which are popular, these are Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar, Windows Live Toolbar and MSN Toobar, I tend to have just one of these install and generally choose Google’s option as it is not too intrusive and features a pop-up blocker, autofill and much more, I would strongly recommend choosing one of the afformentioned toolbars and scrapping the rest.

If you had lots of toolbars installed you should instantly notice that Internet Explorer starts up quicker, also you will probably notice that pages load quicker and more can be seen without having to scroll down so much, tomorrow we will post another Internet Explorer fix guide, I hope this simple guide helped.

Obviously as IE9 is in its beta stages it isn’t going to be perfect, therefore Microsoft are probably sifting through the commonly reported problems as we speak, below we will talk about the problems which we feel are common problems.

At the moment there is no Google Docs compatibility, however this is not really an IE9 problem, instead it seems as if Google Docs has not yet been made compatible for this new browser version.

Most of the problems seem to be related to Adobe Flash, this can result in Flash content not displaying correctly, which sometimes means videos show a black screen whilst the audio playback is fine. Apparently installing this version of Flash resolves all problems.

There also seems to be a bug with the way that IE 9 imports bookmarks/favorites and the favorites bar, when I tried to do this there was no option to import Google Chrome favorites and feeds etc, as I do not use a Firefox, IE8 or Safari I couldn’t see if IE9′s import feature worked.

Did you have problems importing your favorites etc when configuring IE9?

According to Softpedia the download will become live at 10.30am Pacific Time, which means it is roughly 4 hours and 10 minutes away (at the time of this post).

This time means converts to 1.30pm Eastern Time and 6.30pm in the UK, obviously this time is a guideline, therefore don’t worry if 10.30am Pacific time comes and the beta is not available.

When the download does become live we will keep you posted, I think I will download it just to see if it really is as good as experts are suggesting, but I won’t be too hopeful.

Source: Softpedia

At the moment the more knowledgeable computer users out tend to use alternatives (in my experience) such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Apple Safari, all of which are regarded as more more intuitive and faster than Internet Explorer 8, however we are hearing that Internet Explorer 9 has a new design and is a lot less bulky.

Recently Google Chrome’s lead manager had this to say about “We’re really welcoming the innovation and excited about more standards support”, it is very rare to see a rival compliment IE, therefore it may well mean that Internet Explorer 9 is a step in the right direction for Microsoft.

With the Internet Explorer 9 beta launching later today we thought we would get some feedback form you, therefore share your thoughts in the comments section below. Will you download the Internet Explorer 9 beta? If so, what needs to be improved?

Source: Softpedia