Well, that’s three of the most popular browsers in the world in one sentence! Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox users have an important recommendation from Microsoft.
With the company advising these users to also update Internet Explorer to stay safe.
The software titan, of course, recently
pulled the plug on a bunch of old IE versions — basically everything this side of Internet Explorer 11. What this means is that unless your computer is running this latest version of the browser, you may be at risk.
Even if you are running Chrome or Firefox, point being.
Pat Altimore has put up a neat little blog post with a warning that even if people are not using IE, the browser needs to be updated as other Windows component are patched. Not doing so would put part of the operating system at risk.
And vulnerable to attacks:
“On January 12, 2016, only the most current version of Internet Explorer available for Windows will be supported. For older OS such as Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, you will need to upgrade to IE11. Even if you don’t use IE on a PC such as a server, you should upgrade to the latest version of the IE browser.
If you aren’t upgraded to the current version of IE, you won’t be able to apply the current security updates. This could result in some Windows components not being serviced. To ensure applications using components (e.g. Web Browser control) are fully patched, update to the latest version of IE and apply future cumulative IE updates.”
The pitfalls of such deep integration within the OS, as Internet Explorer has in Windows.
Another important point is that removing IE does not help.
In terms of security, so to say.
Even after uninstalling Microsoft’s browser, some components and processes may continue to run in the background. Case in point being the IExplore.exe process that may no longer be visible, but that still makes a computer vulnerable to possible exploits that target flaws that are not yet patched.
Basically everyone should do everyone else a favor and deploy IE patches as soon as they are released.
source:windows10update
