One of the key enablers in the recent Chinese cyberattack on Google and about 20 other US companies and corporates was a zero day hole in Internet Explorer. As Read Write Web notes this Microsoft security vulnerability has broad implications:
Microsoft has acknowledged this vulnerability and is currently working on a patch. Every machine running Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 on virtually every modern Windows operating system is affected by this vulnerability. In an unprecedented move, the German government has now told its citizens to avoid using Internet Explorer for the time being.
Now Bill Gates promised faster refreshes rates on IE; but IE staff are saying they have to make trade offs due to resource limitations. And of course W3C is still waiting for IE to implement HTML, DOM, CSS and JavaScript standards from 1998….Need I say more.