My brother has been taking note of the latest hacker news. The big "story" suggesting that Firefox was critically flawed in a way that could not be patched appears to have been a hoax. But we are, in fact, witnessing some surprising manipulations of javascript (more here and here, for starters). Sites that have been carriers of javascript infections include google, msn, yahoo, aol, wordpress powered blogs, myspace, etc.
In other words, the javascript issue will only get bigger. So far, it's a fairly easy problem to navigate around: you just disable javascript in your browser. This does result in a significant reduction of the Internet's Distraction (or, "Entertainment", if you prefer) Factor. Also, most on-line banking requires use of javascript. But if, after you've been surfing about, you have the need to do some banking (or exchange other critical information), you can typically shake the javascript piggy-backers by closing your browser. Open it up again, and you are more or less off to a fresh start.
That's my understanding of it, thus far -- which is, I admit, pretty sketchy. You are, as always, invited to enlighten me in the comments.
2 comments:
Happy Thanksgiving!
I'm not exactly sure what those words gathered together into what look like sentences mean.
But, just in case, I took all o fhte money out of the bank and am now sleeping more comforably on a matress packed with dough.
I love the sound of scrunching paper. Makes me feel......valuable.
Oh yeah, and my computer? It's been heaved out into the back yard. The squirrels seem to enjoy chewing on the keyboard.
Post a Comment