Microsoft has released today (May 1, 2014) a security update (MS14-021 / 2965111) that addresses the recent Internet Explorer (IE) issue that was first discussed in Security Advisory 2963983. More importantly, Microsoft has decided to make this patch available for Windows XP users, although XP is officially no longer a supported operating system.
If your computers are set to receive automatic Windows updates from Microsoft, then this patch will be automatically installed.
Read more here:
Post revised 4/30/2014
Over this past weekend (April 27, 2014), there have been numerous reports of another zero-day security flaw with Internet Explorer. Some sites have gone so far as to say :”stop using Internet Explorer” completely until this flaw is fixed.
But given that the vulnerability exists in a now deprecated VML vector graphics format, there is an easy workaround solution that is recommended by Microsoft and others — simply unregister the VGX.DLL system file that is associated with this deprecated format.
These instructions should work for XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 computers. Before starting, you will need to know if you are running a 32-bot or a 64-bit version of Windows.
For more information:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/2963983.aspx
This is from the “wish I knew about this sooner…” department.
Microsoft released earlier this year the Internet Explorer 10 Blocker Toolkit for Windows (x86 and x64) and Windows 2008 R2 SP1. This patch does not pertain to networks that are running an update management tool, such as WSUS, that provides the ability to block IE10 from being rolled out.
For all other workstations, you can download and run this tool manually from each workstation. The tool is a .EXE file that contains three files to be extracted.
As a reminder, IE10 is only pushed out for Windows 7/2008R2 and above. So, there’s no need to run this command script on Windows XP or Vista or Windows Server 2003.
Internet Explorer (IE) version 9/10 has a feature called Tracking Protection. Paul Thurrott covers the details of this feature in his blog post. By enabling Tracking Protection, chances are you will also see a performance boost when browsing the Internet.
So here are the quick steps for implementing Tracking Protection:
Please note: whenever you change or add something to Tracking Protection, you may need to close and re-open the Tracking Protection in order to see your changes.
After enabling, click on “Settings for this list…” and it will display for you URL’s (based on your browsing history) that you may wish to block.
Now, go ahead and enjoy a safer and faster browsing experience!
Google recently announced that they will discontinue support for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) for its online apps and services by mid-November 2012. This decision is based on Google’s policy to only support the most recent version of a browser, and it’s immediate predecessor.
IE9 is currently available for Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 2008 servers). IE10 is scheduled to be released in late OcTober.
This announcement by Google specifically impacts Windows XP users, as Windows XP does not and will not support IE9. This means that XP users may experience some loss of features when using things like Google Apps.
Please note that you can continue to use Google as your search engine with IE8 on your XP workstation. That is not being affected. Only online services such as Google Apps are impacted.
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