Penn State Tells Students To Ditch IE 486
Hoyceman writes "About 80,000 students and staff are being told to use an alternate browser. The Penn State ITS department sent the alert 'because the threats are real and alternatives exist to mitigate Web browser vulnerabilities.' InformationWeek is carrying the story."
Article text (Score:4, Informative)
Penn State Tells 80,000 Students To Chuck IE Dec. 10, 2004
A public university with an enrollment of over 80,000 puts the kibosh on Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
A public university with an enrollment of over 80,000 put the kibosh this week on Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and urged its students to switch to alternative browsers such as Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, or Safari.
Penn State University on Wednesday issued an alert to students and staff recommending that they dump IE and use a different browser.
The university's Information Technology Services (ITS) gave the advice "because the threats are real and alternatives exist to mitigate Web browser vulnerabilities," ITS said in a statement. It cited the security problems in IE that have been the focus of both media reports and recommendations from such organizations as the US-CERT, the federally-funded computer response team housed at Carnegie Mellon University.
"The University computing community [should] use standards-based Web browsers other than Internet Explorer to help minimize exposure to attacks that occur through browser vulnerabilities," added ITS.
Penn State's advice is the latest negative news about Microsoft's popular browser. Security problems continue to plague IE -- some patched, some not -- while rivals like Firefox slowly nibble away at its still-dominating market share.
IST vs ITS (Score:1, Informative)
80,000 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Now the question is... (Score:5, Informative)
Article Misleading (Score:5, Informative)
Re:About time (Score:1, Informative)
Re:People still use IE? (Score:3, Informative)
My University did this a month ago. (Score:3, Informative)
To Selected Members of the Yale Community:
We wanted to send you an important reminder about your privacy and
security while browsing the Internet. We are concerned about certain
vulnerabilities inherent in Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE). Even if
you do not use this application as your browser, you should consider a
read through for information about keeping your computer updated.
Due to its popularity, MSIE has increasingly been the target of technical
exploits and sophisticated "phishing" schemes. We strongly encourage you
to take certain precautions for your own security:
1. First and foremost, verify that your computer is updated with current
patches and updates. The best and easiest way to do this is to set your
computer to automatically update its operating system and antivirus
software. If you need assistance doing this, please see below for contact
information.
2. There are known vulnerabilities in MSIE that do not yet have patches.
This has happened in the past and appears likely to happen again in the
future. We recommend that you either:
a) Refrain from visiting unknown websites or providing personal or
financial information while using MSIE, unless you are absolutely certain
you are dealing with a truly reputable website (for example the CDW-G
website in the Yale ePortal).
b) Use an alternative web browser such as Mozilla or Safari. The Yale
Software Library (www.yale.edu/software) provides recommended alternatives
that are easy to install and provide the same basic functionalities as
MSIE. There are some web pages that will only display properly in MSIE
(since it contains certain special proprietary functions), but most web
browsing can be accomplished using the alternatives.
Re:Article Misleading (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Quit Using IE (Score:3, Informative)
When I am on campus and need to print something(something that seems to come up fairly often since most hw assignments for certain classes are avaialable only online), I always laugh at the fact that students are willing to stand in line and wait for a windows computer rather than use the Macs which are always available. Doesn't bother me though, I just go right to the front of the line and go in, do what I need to do, and get out. I highly doubt most of the students are doing anything on those windows machines that cannot be done on a Mac, but for whatever reason they refuse to use them.....I will leave guesses as to the reason as an exercise for the reader.
Additional links and story details (Score:3, Informative)
I submitted this same story with a lot more detail (but not the InformationWeek link) 28 hours prior to the timestamp on this story. It was rejected. Sure, mod me off-topic if you think I'm whining.
I posted my write-up in my journal [slashdot.org] for posterity's sake. Replies are welcome on this post in regards to the actual news story. Comments as to why you think the submission was rejected should only be posted in the journal. (You don't want to be off-topic, right?) Did I submit at the wrong time of day? Was the submission too long? Ok... enough whining.
I won't make you do unnecessary clicking, so here are some of the relevant links that I found:
Penn State's own news article [psu.edu]
Chronicle of Higher Education article [chronicle.com]
ZDnet article [zdnet.com]
The journal entry [slashdot.org] also has comments taken from a PSU IT personnel listserv, as well as other links.
Re:Funny, I got my account disabled for using Fire (Score:4, Informative)
I would definately recommend Deep Freeze for any place with requirements like this. Put all the user profiles and documents on a central server, cluster or removable media and make permanent local changes impossible.
Viruses on the document storage area should be the only malware left; if you put it on a server, it can be scanned easily.
* It's not quite full admin, as you can't install new services or drivers; they might mess with Deep Freeze.
Re:About time (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Article Misleading (Score:2, Informative)
But perhaps this does not address the true picture. They like IE, IE integrates very well for them, in fact there really is no reason for them to switch lab machines. We do not have admin privledges on lab machines, our profiles are not stored on them, the worst we can do it corrupt our own profile which takes them two seconds to wipe. In an environment like this, there is no advantage for them to follow their own word. This announcement will help our the ResCom staff (residence hall computing, the group that fixes people's dormroom computers). They will have less spyware to uninstall.
Re:You are kidding me! (Score:3, Informative)
After a few weeks, most people realize that they can skip the classes and only show up for exams, so it's not really a waste of time for those who do not need it. However, for those who do, it ensures that they have a baseline level of computing knowledge, which helps keep our network safer.