- Penn State 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.
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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