Microsoft’s Internet Explorer isn’t what it used to be. Maybe it never was. And now, an IBM research team found a flaw that goes as far back as the Windows 95 era.
Tech giant IBM’s X-Force Research team found a data manipulation venerability called CVE-2014-6332. It’s nicknamed the unicorn bug. It’s a rare bug IE depends on but a hacker can use it for attacks that force codes to run remotely and take over the user’s machine. Don’t let the name 2014 fool you. This venerability has been around since the mid-1990s. This bug became exploitable when IE 3.0 and Visual Basic Script was released back in 1996. Hackers can use these remote codes to install malware, which can lead to keylogging, screen-grabbing, exploiting remote address, and other malware problems. IBM X-Force revealed the problem in spring 2014, even talked about it at this year’s Black Hat USA Conference. When the bug was found, they didn’t find it harmfully active, but there’s still room for caution. Exploitation is tricky, but when it’s successful, it can cause data attacks that can wipe out important files and destroy any system.
This explains a lot. The quality of Internet Explorer over the years has been downhill and I see little improvement in sight. Plus, web browser competitors like Firefox and Google Chrome are becoming more and more popular, probably because IE is slipping in quality. The other disturbing thing is that it took nearly twenty years for this problem to be exposed.? And it took an outside company to expose the Windows venerability. And why isn’t mainstream media talking about this? For a problem to be plaguing one of the largest Internet conglomerates for nearly two decades; that should be breaking news. I think IE is lucky nobody really exploited this issue. If they did, it probably would have cause the whole Internet as we know it to near collapse. Is this venerability the reason IE isn’t what it used to be?