| Published on 25-10-2006 In General |
| Viewed 1627 times |
| While Micro is still 'soft' and Yahoo! plays hard to get |
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Written by
T. S. V. Hari |
Microsoft has released the latest version of its browser Internet Explorer 7 and already people have found out that it has a serious security flaw.
According to Danish security firm Secunia, those using the browser could be potential victims of hackers who can steal Internet banking details of unwary users.
Many probably still do not know that IE6 too has the same flaw and is yet to be patched up by Microsoft.
According to Secunia, the discovered vulnerability can be exploited by malicious people to disclose potentially sensitive information.
This is despite the fact that Microsoft took several years to release its new browser.
The flaw enables attackers to steal user information that's being entered on a separate website, just as long as the user is visiting a site exploiting the flaw in another window.
Potential criminals can lead unsuspecting users to an infected website and if the victim logs into his/her online bank account, the attacker would be able to hijack the user's username and password and steal hard-earned money or worse, secret data of the banks themselves.
But, experts who find Microsoft products the best buy opine that the threat is farfetched.
"These days everyone has more than one password for most of the services used. What is more, most people have begun distrusting online banking unless the connection is 100 percent secure – for instance, people can have one password for their computers and another for their online banking. When that is the case, under normal circumstances, hackers can't break the code – if [it is a very big IF] the two passwords are totally different," says one computer expert who, for the time being wishes to remain anonymous.
"It is hard to exploit the flaw because it requires the attacker to lure someone to a malicious site, and for the attacker to know what other secure site the visitor might simultaneously have open," Thomas Kristensen, Chief Technology Officer of Secunia was quoted as saying in Denmark.
However, the fact remains that no matter how big the corporation, no matter how stringent the research, there will always be flaws to be exploited by killjoys.
While all this is happening, it looks like that Yahoo Inc is being elbowed out by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and Google Inc. especially after their respective, almost completed acquisitions of MySpace.com and YouTube Inc.
On its part Yahoo isn't sitting quiet either and is said to be trying to acquire Facebook – a site which looks like being a MySpace clone but has a huge following among educational institutions.
Its founder, 22-year old Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (date of birth May 14 1984) is an American computer programmer who created Facebook with the help of his Harvard roommates Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz. Facebook according to its own blurb, is used by over nine million people spread over 2,200 universities, 22,000 high schools and 2,000 companies across the world. .
Zuckerberg is playing hard to get.
That said, it must also be mentioned that there are many who say that Yahoo doesn't need new acquisitions because the portal has enough and more to keep its subscribers happy.
Further, arrivals of yuppie sites will not threaten the behemoth called Yahoo, analysts in the US have repeatedly said. Without the newfound glory of fresh content, Yahoo in itself is a self-sufficient portal, its supporters have maintained.
But one must also remember that it was Yahoo! which began stretching its limbs in 1999 with the acquisition of GeoCities Inc – then considered the 'in thing' for personal publishing tools and web-based communities. Then it was seen as a trigger for a much longer reach for Yahoo. GeoCities had built one of the largest online communities and was then the third most popular site.
It must be said that Google and News Corp have copied what Yahoo did seven years ago, but that still doesn't mean that Yahoo Inc shouldn't find new companies to buy. In fact there is all the more reason to replicate its seven-year-old successful policy since others are doing it with greater success.
For a moment, let us go back seven years.
Internet users who value their independence much more than the obtrusiveness of big cowboy companies had started levitating away from GeoCities because of its "watermark" that stayed fixed in the bottom right portion of the screen no matter where the viewer scrolled.
"[M]any users felt the watermark interfered with the design of their webpage and threatened to move their web pages elsewhere. The watermark also had cross-browser issues and clashed with the mark up of some pages. Geocities said in a press release that the company had received upbeat feedback regarding the watermark," the free encyclopedia Wikipedia had said.
Yahoo cared two hoots about that and rubbed its users on the wrong side by issuing new terms of service to establish that Yahoo, not the users, owned all content on user sites. Because of this, Yahoo had lost a lot of users, according to Wikipedia.
The end result is that MySpace, YouTube which did not have these patronizing conditions flourished and have been bought over after bigger companies paid what can be termed more than a king's ransom.
Agency reports have said that Yahoo has failed to keep GeoCities at the forefront of community Web sites and it has affected Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Clubs.
In recent times, one has to admit that in more ways than one, Yahoo has corrected itself and even its advertisements no longer seem overtly intrusive.
The final word on these issues may not be pronounced for a long time to come because MySpace is yet to succeed in its new avatar and YouTube is yet to stand the test of time under its new ownership of Google Inc.
But Yahoo's shares have been on the downswing for quite sometime now. Its EPS too isn't too promising. Further, due to its earlier recalcitrance, the Facebook deal remains a little more than a mild rumour.
However, it must be admitted that this scribe has a Yahoo account and has had no reasons to complain so far, but for the little fact that the company's Indian office in Bangalore is yet to respond to the email sent to its PR department. We still don't know whether Yahoo will use Indian soil to contact extraterrestrials.
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