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IE Vulnerability Allows Scammers to Steal your Account!!

Tue Dec 16, 2008 10:03 pm

Quoted from the BD Chat

Apparently there's this huge hole in IE which pretty much lets hackers steal your passwords now from virtually any website.
Right now they are mainly targeting gaming passwords, in other words neo is not a safe place if you're using IE. And this includes all versions of IE.
Switch to FF, Google Chrome, or Opera. These are safe.


Basically, people are using an exploit in Internet Explorer to steal passwords for gaming websites. At the moment, the sites are mainly Chinese gaming sites, but it may soon spread to other sites (such as Neopets or Subeta). The best solution would be to switch to Firefox or another browser until this problem has been fixed.

Edit: Here is the article about this.

Re: IE Vulnerability Allows Scammers to Steal your Account!!

Tue Dec 16, 2008 10:20 pm

Wait, so do you know if I use Firefox just for Neopets, will that be enough? What if I use IE for other things?

Re: IE Vulnerability Allows Scammers to Steal your Account!!

Tue Dec 16, 2008 10:30 pm

Catgrrrrrrl wrote:Wait, so do you know if I use Firefox just for Neopets, will that be enough? What if I use IE for other things?


Well, neither the news story nor the Microsoft advisory explains HOW it is done. My opinion is that it's best to use another browser for all browsing activities.

You may choose to continue to use Microsoft IE for browsing if you like - the explanation makes it seem as if visiting some websites causes the problem, in that those websites have specific code which causes the IE crash, and therefore the vulnerability. By visiting only websites which you trust (and when you MANUALLY enter the website address, rather than following links from search engines or other, unrelated, websites) you minimize your risk. However, I cannot say for certain, and so doing this will not absolutely protect you.

Again: Using another browser is, for now, the best solution. Microsoft has also posted several workarounds. Should you decide to continue using IE, visit only websites you trust, and visit them only by directly entering their URLs, as opposed to following links, whenever possible.

Re: IE Vulnerability Allows Scammers to Steal your Account!!

Tue Dec 16, 2008 11:07 pm

Can anyone tell me how to export my list of bookmarks from IE7?

Re: IE Vulnerability Allows Scammers to Steal your Account!!

Tue Dec 16, 2008 11:13 pm

Pardona wrote:Can anyone tell me how to export my list of bookmarks from IE7?


This should help ya http://www.google.com/search?client=ope ... 8&oe=utf-8

Re: IE Vulnerability Allows Scammers to Steal your Account!!

Thu Dec 18, 2008 6:59 am

Catgrrrrrrl wrote:Wait, so do you know if I use Firefox just for Neopets, will that be enough? What if I use IE for other things?


The reason this thing is so big is that it could be used for stealing things worse than gaming passwords: credit card numbers, banking info, anything your browser knows that you'd rather a stranger not know. :/

I'd recommend any IE users to switch to one of the other browsers permanently though. Since most of the world uses IE most of the people writing the malicious codes are writing them for exploiting IE specifically, so by using another browser you dodge those bullets with no effort. :)


Edit: I really want to know what they mean by "virtually any website" How?? None of the dang news articles I can find tell you anything except: "Panic, everyone!! Switch browsers!! Oh but there's a patch coming. Still, panic!!" Just tell me how you'd fall into the thing! Sigh.

Re: IE Vulnerability Allows Scammers to Steal your Account!!

Thu Dec 18, 2008 1:23 pm

A patch has been posted on the Microsoft website.

Re: IE Vulnerability Allows Scammers to Steal your Account!!

Thu Dec 18, 2008 6:37 pm

*pets Konqueror*
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