Switch to Lynx ...

... the browser that is immune to all possible javascript based malware.

hardened?

I don't believe the term means what you think it means. To me, "hardened" means "close to impenetrable". What Microsoft does is more like "vaguely firm, sort of", but definitely not "hardened". It's like the difference between "carbon steel alloy 1090" and "firm tofu", with Microsoft's offerings more on the "firm tofu" end of things.

Wow.

How surprising.

Re: Some things never change...

Pierre, I doubt many of the affected users _didn't_ have updated anti-malware. The real problem is that most users update their virus-definition files AFTER an outbreak has occured. In this story, McAfee started investigating after the outbreak.... Much, much, too late.

So anti-malware is not the answer. At least not to any question I can think of.

Browsing with javascript disabled OTOH, has saved me lots of grief. (and apparently protects me against this threat as well)

But, IE7, under Vista, runs with reduced priviligies. The Register neglects to mention whether this helped or not. I would be surprised if it didn't. (but this story wasn't limited to Vista, so XP users are out of luck in either csae)

Swiss cheese?

More like cottage cheese.

@Stu Reeves

>like Firefox or Opera have no security holes

Er, that's not the point. The point is that patches are usually released quickly once a problem is discovered, and they tend to work. Microsoft tend to leave IE wide open to exploits for weeks or months, and quite often produces half-hearted, half-finished or untested patches.

To be fair, we're approaching the point where the only viable "patch" for IE security (and in fact, functionality and standards) is for MS to replace the core .exe file with a something that just pops a message box with "you can download <insert list of 5 "best" browsers> by clicking here"

@Stu Reeves

Not as secure as my BBC Master.