Looks like the IE exploit that was released a few days ago is a lot more serious than anyone thought. How serious you might be asking? Well, it’s serious enough to get Microsoft flooding media outlets advising users to switch to ‘an alternative browser.’ That’s pretty intense!

According to slashdot,

The flaw, which affects all versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, is manifested via malware and has infected over 6000 sites thus far. Microsoft states: ‘The vulnerability exists as an invalid pointer reference in the data-binding function of Internet Explorer. When data binding is enabled (which is the default state), it is possible under certain conditions for an object to be released without updating the array length, leaving the potential to access the deleted object’s memory space. This can cause Internet Explorer to exit unexpectedly, in a state that is exploitable.’”

Damage control!

Firefox 3 was released with much fan-fare last week, including a marketing campaign from Mozilla to set a new record for “most software downloads in 24 hours” in the Guinness Book of World Records. According to their “World Record FAQ,” they hoped to beat the number of downloads that version 2 of Firefox saw, which was 1.6 million. Well they’ve recently updated their “Download Day” site, indicating that in the 24-hour time period after publicly releasing the new version, the software was downloaded over 8 million times. Since then they’ve counted over 20 million downloads and that’s just from their official site (due to server lags, the release was quickly put up on private mirrors, so the real download number will never be known).

Want to celebrate your participation in this event? Why not (other than for the obvious reasons)? Mozilla now lets you print out your very own “personalized” Firefox 3 Download Day certificate by entering your name on their “Flaunt It” portion of the website. Click on the image posted above for an example of what it looks like (it will open in a new window). Now you can be the envy of your IT staff… this will surely show them you’re hip to the latest software releases and maybe they’ll show you how to install that cool screensaver you’ve been having trouble with!

Sooooo corny… but i couldn’t resist.