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Government: Internet Explorer's as safe as rival browsers

By Stuart Turton

Posted on 20 Jan 2010 at 17:50

The Government has defended its decision not to warn people away from Internet Explorer, claiming there’s no evidence that pushing people to other browsers will make them more secure.

“We take internet security very seriously,” the Cabinet Office says in a statement. “Complex software will always have vulnerabilities and motivated adversaries will always work to discover and take advantage of them.

“There is no evidence that moving from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure. Regular software patching and updating will help defend against the latest threats,” it concludes.

If everybody moves to a different browser, we’re only going to see the attackers target that instead

The advice was backed by security firm McAfee, which claimed that herding people en masse to another browser would only cause more problems.

“If everybody moves to a different browser, we’re only going to see the attackers target that instead,” McAfee spokesperson Greg Day told PC Pro. “The more popular something is, the more it’s attacked, and three months down the line we’d just see the same problem in that browser.”

“It doesn't matter which browser people use, they’ll all have some level of weakness in them.”

The Government has come under scrutiny for its refusal to follow France and Germany in condemning Internet Explorer. The issue came to the fore when it was revealed that a flaw in Internet Explorer 6 was used by Chinese hackers to infiltrate Google's systems.

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User comments

Mr Bungle

considering the government delvelops websites that are not compatible with firefox/chrome/opera etc. And 90% of their backend is Microsoft. i wouldnt expect them to respond with anything else. This attitude of the govenment is completely blinkered and foohardy

By 5limskinny on 20 Jan 2010

Of course I.E6 is safe and there are WMD available at 45 minutes notice in a place called Iraq ...

/Government propaganda machine continues to churn out drivvle...

By Dr_Zeus on 20 Jan 2010

That actually resembles common sense and a considered response from the government rather than jumping on the trash IE bandwagon.

By fabbers_uk on 20 Jan 2010

Agreed. That's what happens when you suck up to a single company and ignore standards based solutions in favour of proprietary ones. All it took was one visit from Bill Gates to see Tony Blair in Downing Street. Talk about a soft touch...

By SwissMac on 20 Jan 2010

Mr Bungle looks good next to government IT!

No comment by "The cabinet" on government use of out of date browsers then? Not to mention OSs that are unpatchable due to their age and the hoops their "change control" morons put in place.
They haven't got a clue.
JH

By JohnHo1 on 20 Jan 2010

So how many companies were hit in the UK?

Nobody wants to come forward - but if they did - do you think the British Government would recommend using other browsers? - Simply, No.

;)
It [probably] sees this as terrorism and deals with it in the same way - we don't bow down to terrorist no matter how many banks they rob, or accounts they break, secrets they steal, - because we have no money or secrets for that matter ;)

By nicomo on 20 Jan 2010

Mr Bungle

Dont get me started on terrorism... The govenments policy on not negotiating with terrorists does not seem to be applicable to the Financial Terrorists in the city...sorry, i believe bankers is the term.

Anyway i cant believe the government is still not concerned given that most government based systems operate on XP with IE6 as the preferred browser, compaibility over security appears to be their primary concern. If only they followed their european cousins and took a good look at the alternatives instead of thinking poin & click the microsoft way.. is the future

By 5limskinny on 20 Jan 2010

McAfee spokesperson Greg Day is correct, the most popular software draws the most attention from hackers.
That is why the British military uses an obscure OS and browser to reduce the risk of attack......WRONG!!
The British military uses MS windows and IE. They might as wear bright red jackets and walk at the enemy....Oh forgot, they used to do that as well!

IE in one for or other hold about 76% (I think) of the market. That means the majority people are affected by it. If the government encouraged people to use a range of other browsers so no single browser had more then 30% of the market most people would be safe from any single flaw in any one of the browsers. This is call risk management.
The government is obviously thinking of the hackers. If hacker were limited to only 30% of the mark per hack they would have to work twice as hard or become unemployed and no government want unemployment to rise!

By M_Hamer on 21 Jan 2010

That is exactly the future. Look at the mis-management of the NHS and the NHS new IT system, indeed rather the lack of a new IT system, which has costs millions of tax-payers money.

The government will not encourage anyone to upgrade, purely because as mentioned already, their systems were designed to run with IE6, if they upgraded to IE8, everything would stop working... so, no change there then.... perhaps they should upgrade, they probably wouldn't notice anyway.

By treadmill on 21 Jan 2010

@M_Hamer

I agree. In advising people to change browsers, I doubt the majority will change, so in effect it would be a re-balancing that would actually benefit everybody, as less targets for hackers on a specific platform, making it harder for the hackers!

McAffee certainly have a vested interest in Microsoft (and dodgy browsers) though, if you think about it ;)

By GAZZAT5 on 21 Jan 2010

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