Slashdot wrote:Security experts warned Microsoft 10 years ago that putting IE as a component of Windows Explorer was a bad idea, looks like Microsoft finally decided to listen to the advice. According to a short write up in Business Week, Microsoft has decided that when IE7 comes out with Vista it will no longer be a component of Windows Explorer and will be able to replace IE6 even on XP machines.
The report was delivered by podcast on BusinessWeek.
Though Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer will now be two different applications, there isn't any hinting at being able to uninstall IE7 completely yet. Of course, since IE would no longer be a tightly-integrated "component", the threat is reduced and perhaps even partially contained to IE. Also new is a permissions-based ActiveX system, which will automatically prompt a user for action when an ActiveX control is detected and attempted to be loaded, with a whitelist for trusted-by-Microsoft apps such as Flash and Windows Media Player. Furthermore, ActiveX is now "cut off" from the rest of the system: they aren't allowed to change security settings or a user's personal options, and aren't allowed to permanently save files to a user's hard drive.
IE7 is now including a phishing filter, much like Netscape 8's, which will "display a red bar across the top of the browser window" if a site is on a Microsoft-hosted blacklist. Some detection functionality is also included, displaying a yellow bar.
Some 'features' have also been removed, such as the ability to remove the address bar from an IE window, which is a prime security concern in terms of phishing.
Perhaps this is why Vista is being pushed back to 2007?
UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 Donzilla/1.1PR1 (WML/1.3)
