10 years ago a browser was born.

Its name was Internet Explorer 6. Now that we’re in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it’s time to say goodbye.

We all know that Internet Explorer 6 is outdated and that you should move away from it to a newer browser immediately. For security, safety as well as fro compatibility reasons.

Therefore we created the The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown page with the goal to get Internet Explorer 6 market share below 1% – currently it seems to be still at 12% which is way too much.

If I look at the statistics of my blog, this is currently the distribution of the browsers hitting this page:

Looking at Internet Explorer versions, it seems that you are security conscious people - not really a surprise:

So, we are better than the rest of still 4% of you are using a very, very old version. And by the way 16% are using a version-1. That this data cannot be reflecting the real world is clear as I do not expect 1/3 of the people using Internet Explorer being already on the Release Candidate of Internet Explorer 9.

Therefore I added my main blog to the IE6Countdown initiative (please move to the main blog anyway :-)). If you see this banner when looking at the blog:

I would like you immediately to go to this download page to get the latest version of Internet Explorer and to help to drive the IE6 share below 1%!!!

Roger

You might have seen this experiment but it is absolutely astonishing. A guy called Andy from Scotland tested the upgrade path from Windows 1 through to Windows 7. 10 minutes worth investing if you want to get some nostalgic feelings:

Here is the original blog post: Chain of fools : Upgrading through every version of Windows

Have fun and enjoy

Roger

Botnets are one of the toughest problems in the world of Cybercrime today. At least, this is what we think… ENISA just published an interesting paper called Botnets: 10 Tough Questions, which raise questions about e.g. the size of botnets or better the way the size is estimated etc. Basically the 10 questions are:

1. HOW MUCH TRUST TO PUT IN PUBLISHED FIGURES?
2. WHAT ARE THE MAIN CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH JURISDICTION?
3. WHAT SHOULD BE THE MAIN ROLE OF THE EU/NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS?
4. WHICH PARTIES SHOULD TAKE WHICH RESPONSIBILITIES?
5. WHERE TO INVEST MONEY MOST EFFICIENTLY?
6. WHAT ARE KEY INCENTIVES FOR COOPERATIVE INFORMATION SHARING?
7. WHAT ARE KEY CHALLENGES FOR COOPERATIVE INFORMATION SHARING?
8. ARE THERE UNSEEN/UNDETECTED BOTNETS?
9. WHICH ASPECTS ARE STILL MISSING IN THE FIGHT AGAINST BOTNETS?
10. WHAT ARE FUTURE TRENDS?

The best thing is, that they do not only ask questions but try to answer them. Even though I do not agree with all the answers ENISA gives, it is an interesting and thought-provoking piece of work

Roger

I just read this article on Google pulling 50 applications from their Android marketplace (Google uses remote delete to remove Android apps from smartphones – Update). A very good decision as these apps leverage an exploit to access user data.

However, what made me think is that they removed the applications from the devices. This would be – to me – an unacceptable intrusion on my device. I am completely aware that the strategy other vendors, like us, have to revoke the application certificate/manifest has the same effect: The application is not working anymore. But to me it is a huge difference, whether the vendor de-installs an app or just blocks the execution. The reason for this is fairly simple: If they mingle actively on my device, what else do they do on it? What do they do with my data, contacts, mail etc.?

Would be worrisome to me…

Roger

FTC released their Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book for January – December 2010. The interesting and scary thing is that fraud via phone is on the raise. We get more and more complaints by customers as well, telling us that they got a call from “Microsoft” with the ask for getting access to the PC because of a problem “we see”. It was just something we start to realize – this is the first time, I have seen data about it.

If you are not living in an English speaking country (or at least are not English speaking), you seem to be safe – the criminals are not (yet) multi-lingual

Roger