Stop Using IE Now!

US-CERT: Beware of IE: "The U.S. government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) is warning Web surfers to stop using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

On the heels of last week's sophisticated malware attack that targeted a known IE flaw, US-CERT updated an earlier advisory to recommend the use of alternative browsers because of 'significant vulnerabilities' in technologies embedded in IE."

You may have heard already about the initial Homeland Security warning about the Scob attack, which installed, among other nasty things, a keylogger on your computer when you visited any of a number of well-known and oft-visited sites (such as the Kelley Blue Book site), without you knowing it. A keylogger keeps track of everything you type, and criminals can get your sensitive passwords (such as for banking sites) using them.

"It has been more than two weeks since Microsoft confirmed the existence on an "extremely critical" IE bug, which was being used to load adware/spyware and malware on PCs without user intervention but, even though the company hinted it would go outside its monthly security update cycle to issue a fix, the flaw remains unpatched."

Note: "remains unpatched"! If you haven't already, go now and download Firefox. It's small and fast, unlike the regular Mozilla and Netscape, and it will import all your Internet Explorer bookmarks and saved passwords when you install it, so moving to the new browser is painless. You'll gain tabbed browsing and built-in pop-up blocking, too, along with all the security enhancements.

Go! Now! Save yourself!