A major new security risk has been discovered in almost all popular web browsers - including IE, Firefox, Netscape, Opera, and others.

It allows a malicious website to take control of a popup window that has been opened in a legitimate website. The implications of this for online banking are frightening, because you are TOTALLY unaware that anything is amiss.

The internet security site “Secunia” has a demonstration of how it works at
http://secunia.com/multiple_browsers_window_injection_vulnerability_test/

I got quite a fright when I tried the demonstration.
And at present, there’s no fix.

About the only thing that you can do to protect yourself is to have only one browser window open at any one time.

If you are using Internet Explorer version 6 without the SP2 upgrade, your computer is at risk from a new security problem which was discovered last week.
It’s called an IFRAME Buffer Overflow.

More details from Secunia Advisories are at http://secunia.com/SA12959

Their recommended solution? - Use a non Microsoft browser.
We suggest Firefox.

And as always, Don’t click on links in unsolicited email messages.

If you are still using Microsoft Internet Explorer as your web browser, do yourself a favour and go to www.GetFirefox.com and download the production version of Firefox, which was released yesterday.

The download is 4.5 megabytes - very compact when compared with IE.

Firefox is much faster, more secure, and up to date .

It will automatically block those annoying popups, and it has multi-tabbed browser windows. You haven’t lived till you’ve experienced the convenience of these.

We’ve been using it for months - it’s great. What more can I say.

Eric G>

Edit 16/11/04: Robert Varnosi from Tech Republic has written a great article on “breaking up his relationship with IE” which once near and dear to him.
It’s at http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-22_11-5455092.html?tag=nl.e101

You can now try out LINUX on your desktop computer without affecting your current operating system in any way.

The October 2003 APC (mentioned below) also has a CD-ROM with a bootable version of Lindows 4.0, an extremely user friendly version of Unix.

After a couple of minutes bootup time on a 1ghz Celeron, it had configured itself and was up and running. All system devices were setup properly without any manual intervention.

Internet connections through our router happened immediately, and web browsing was a LOT faster than in Windows.

Unix type operating systems have always been the preferred option for servers, and are now starting to become viable for desktop use. It’s cheap, and is immune from many of the worms, viruses, and other problems that plague Windows users. The Lindows distribution is very user friendly, and their “Click and Run” warehouse contains a wide range of free, easily installed software.

Unix may not be for everyone, but the prospect of saving one to two thousand dollars per computer on the Operating system and basic software is one of the motivating factors in the increasing acceptance of Unix variants onto the Desktop.

And it’s going to be more common than ever soon, because a free Lindows operating system will soon be on every new Seagate hard disk.

What would it take for You to switch away from Windows on your desktop?
Click on the link below, and leave your comments.

If you don’t want to spend many hundreds of dollars for a Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and other essential programs we suggest that you take a look at Open Office.

This is a free suite of programs that are compatible with Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. You can exchange documents with users of Microsoft programs, and everyone will be able to read and write the documents that are created.

Version 1.1 of these programs has recently been released. More info at OpenOffice.org

(*** Save hours of downloading if you are on a modem. The October 2003 edition of Australian Personal computer contains the Open Office suite on CD ROM. There are also many other useful programs and upgrades on the disks. )