Media bias rears its ugly head on IE7 ‘flaw’ 

system · 2006-10-23T15:11:48.000Z

" I have never seen a minor issue that Secunia rates a 2 on a scale of 5 get so much negative attention from the media. To put this in perspective, Mozilla’s Firefox has three of these 2-rated vulnerabilities unpatched and two of them are two years old."

Read the complete article at the link below:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=350&tag=nl.e622

FreewheelinFrank · 2006-10-23T15:49:43.000Z

George Ou’s column has it’s own bias, which has not gone uncommented upon on the blog:

Hey at least for these IE flaws, no matter how serious, there's evidence that they actually exist. That's got to make them more serious than mysterious made up exploits that are never released or proven, right?
Your reaction is kind of stunning really. The most biased columnist on ZDNet is shocked to see what he considers bias in the reporting of others. Luckily, you’re here for us George, to be completely unbiased, to never promote one company’s product over another’s. To see things clearly and fairly, to never bias your data to help support your pre-established conclusions. Upon your death, sainthood awaits.

Perhaps you’ll look deeply into the anger you feel over this issue and it will help you understand how many others feel when they read your columns. Or perhaps you’ll remain willfully ignorant of your own flaws and you’ll just keep motoring along, full speed and bias ahead.

Posted by: tic swayback

(George Ou was quick to jump on the recent ‘zero-day Friefox exploit’ hoax:

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=23890.msg197155#msg197155)

Here’s another interesting comment:

It was a nice, selective bit of quoting when George said
“Firefox has three of these 2-rated vulnerabilities unpatched and two of them are two years old (here and here)”

Well George is right. In he’s more than right because these vulnernabilities will never be patched. Why? Because they are for Firefox 0.9 which is no longer supported. Given the fact that he is moaning about the media tailoring the story to suit their own prejudices, maybe he should take a dose of his own medicine.

Next time George, click on the detail link in the report. For your edification here are the summaries.

"Mozilla Firefox 0.9.2 allows web sites to set cookies for country-specific top-level domains, such as .ltd.uk, .plc.uk, and .sch.uk, which could allow remote attackers to perform a session fixation attack and hijack a user’s HTTP session.

The Apple Java plugin, as used in Netscape 7.1 and 7.2, Mozilla 1.7.2, and Firefox 0.9.3 on MacOS X 10.3.5, when tabbed browsing is enabled, does not properly handle SetWindow(NULL) calls, which allows Java applets from one tab to draw to other tabs and facilitates phishing attacks that spoof tabs."

Posted by: bportlock

bob3160 · 2006-10-23T16:16:22.000Z

CharleyO post:1:

" I have never seen a minor issue that Secunia rates a 2 on a scale of 5 get so much negative attention from the media. To put this in perspective, Mozilla’s Firefox has three of these 2-rated vulnerabilities unpatched and two of them are two years old."

Read the complete article at the link below:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=350&tag=nl.e622

Nothing new Charley,
It’s another case of the silent minority pouncing of the most used browser.
We also know that any time any one defends Microsoft or any part of their operating system,
they’ll probably also be pounced up-on.

Pounce away… ;D

system · 2006-10-23T16:23:01.000Z

While I do not disagree with you on the bias of George Ou, I think the point was that those flaws were not patched even while FF 0.9 was being used and supported.

Nothing nor no one is perfect. In the case of both IE and FF, these are rated as minor flaws. So, why jump all over MS the day after IE7 is released while little was said about FF 0.9 not being patched while it was supported? I think that was the point of the article.

I only posted this as information for all regardless of the browser of choice. Actually, I am posting these while using Opera9. I favor neither IE nor FF. Please do not turn this into another argument thread as has been done too often lately.

FreewheelinFrank · 2006-10-23T16:43:58.000Z

I didn’t really see the media jumping all over this story, with headlines like this:

Minor issues surface after IE 7 launch

long link

MS and researchers split hairs over first IE7 flaw

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/20/ie7_flaw_dispute/

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