Cyber Criminals Continue to Target Internet Explorer 6

Zscaler, a cloud security company, has recently conducted a research according to which nearly 9-year-old IE6 browsers continue to draw attacks from cyber criminals.

More than 25% of the people going online use Internet Explorer 6 Web-browser of Microsoft although it lacks a lot of modern security facilities. Consequently, attackers utilize it for carrying out BlackHat SEO (search engine optimization) tricks to contaminate genuine websites or to distribute phony antivirus software.

They repeat automated and practiced methods of attacks which are succeeding at an alarming rate.

In addition to becoming increasingly personalized and sophisticated, the knowledge of attacks pertaining to their source like botnets is also not helping in any way to eradicate them.

According to the security researchers, there have been security problems with IE6. In the late 2009, hackers exploited security flaw in the browser to steal secret data from Google and several other leading technology firms.

On the basis of the data gathered by Zscaler, the security company forecasts that Internet Explorer will remain a dominant browser for large organizations than for private users. Its closest competitor, Firefox from Mozilla, trails far behind as only 1 in 7 corporations choose to adopt it. Thus, the widespread utilization of IE6 puts organizations at risk of cyber attacks.

Unlike the common people, large enterprises aren't very serious about upgrading IE that contains known security flaws. According to Zscaler, one such flaw resulted in the infamous Aurora assault on Google and other US companies during January 2010.

Security researchers, IT professionals and others are aware of assaults. They also know about the existing malware threats, the severest security flaws, even the massive botnets like Zeus, Koobface, Torpig and Monkif. Despite the awareness, these attacks keep on posing big problems.

To safeguard end-users, Microsoft is constantly advising them that they should upgrade IE6 as the browser version has already expired. It (IE6) dates back as far as August 2001, yet people keep on using this version which causes a greater online security problem.

Related article: Cyber Child abuser Sentenced To Imprisonment

» SPAMfighter News - 6/9/2010