January 21, 2010

Microsoft Corp. raced to release a fix for a security hole in its Internet Explorer Web browser as the company sought to contain the fallout from governments urging users to switch to competing software.

The Redmond, Wash., company said it plans to issue a software update for Internet Explorer on Thursday to patch a security vulnerability first reported last week that could allow hackers to take over a computer that visits Web sites loaded with malicious code. While Internet Explorer has suffered numerous security vulnerabilities over the years, the latest flaw is especially high-profile because it is believed to have been used in attacks on Google Inc. and other companies that Google linked to China.

Government agencies in France and Germany responded in recent days by urging users to switch to alternative browsers, at least temporarily, until Microsoft could find a fix for the problem. The Australian government on Friday also recommended switching Web browsers as one of several precautions users could take to stay safe online.

The recommendations seem to have given Microsoft competitors a boost. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Mozilla said daily downloads of its Firefox Web browser in France by Internet Explorer users have doubled to about 80,000 since France issued its recommendation. The change is similar to a rise in downloads that Mozilla and another company, Opera Software ASA of Norway, experienced for their browsers in Germany.

A spokesman for Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, Matthias Gärtner, said his agency issued its warning last week because the agency is required by law to advise German government institutions about computer-security weaknesses. The decision to recommend users replace Internet Explorer with a temporary replacement browser was made because Microsoft hadn't yet developed a patch to close the weakness in Internet Explorer. It is important to provide users with a solution to close the loophole at the same time as the announcement of a possible computer-security weakness, Mr. Gartner said, because many hackers learn about the weaknesses from such announcements.

Mark Miller, director of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative, said the company has been "working around the clock to develop and test a security update that will eliminate this problem" and couldn't release a fix for it sooner. Mr. Miller added that Microsoft is in communication with government agencies around the world about the most recent security issue, as it has been on others in the past.

"It does take time to develop a security update," Mr. Miller said. "In this case, we accelerated testing to ensure we could deploy ahead of our usual schedule to help protect customers from an evolving threat landscape." The moves by Germany and France come as Microsoft's share of browser usage in the region could be weakened further by a recent settlement in an antitrust case between the company and the European Union. Under that agreement, Microsoft in coming months will present users of personal computers running its Windows operating system with a choice of Web browsers to install on their systems.

Source:-http://online.wsj.com