What Security Features
does Internet Explorer Have?
Internet Explorer is a safe browser in many ways. The
latest version of IE supports Secure Socket Layer (SSL) 2.0/3.0, Private
Communication Technology (PCT) 1.0, CryptoAPI, and VeriSign certificates, and
one version employs 128-bit encryption, one of the strongest forms of encryption
that's commercially available for use over the Internet. To see if you have the
128-bit version of Internet Explorer, go to the
Wells
Fargo Bank site and take their browser test.
"Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is a Netscape-developed protocol submitted to
the W3C working group on security for consideration as a standard security
approach for World Wide Web browsers and servers on the Internet. SSL provides a
security "handshake" that is used to initiate the TCP/IP connection.
This handshake results in the client and server agreeing on the level of
security they will use and fulfills any authentication requirements for the
connection. Thereafter, SSL's only role is to encrypt and decrypt the byte
stream of the application protocol being used (for example, HTTP). This means
that all the information in both the HTTP request and the HTTP response are
fully encrypted, including the URL the client is requesting, any submitted form
contents (such as credit card numbers), any HTTP access authorization
information (usernames and passwords), and all the data returned from the server
to the client." --
Microsoft's
IIS 1.0 Features Tour. It has been reported, however, that SSL has been
cracked.
Private Communication Technology (PCT) is a Microsoft-developed security
protocol available in IE only. According to their
Internet
draft, "The Private Communication Technology (PCT) protocol is designed
to provide privacy between two communicating applications (a client and a
server), and to authenticate the server and (optionally) the client. PCT assumes
a reliable transport protocol (e.g., TCP) for data transmission and reception.
The PCT protocol is application protocol-independent. A "higher level"
application protocol (e.g., HTTP, FTP, TELNET, etc.) can layer on top of the PCT
protocol transparently. The PCT protocol begins with a handshake phase that
negotiates an encryption algorithm and (symmetric) session key as well as
authenticating a server to the client (and, optionally, vice versa), based on
certified asymmetric public keys. Once transmission of application protocol data
begins, all data is encrypted using the session key negotiated during the
handshake."
IE also supports server and client authentication by using digital certificates
to identify users to web servers. In addition, IE supports code signing with
Authenticode, which verifies that downloaded code has not been modified. For
more information on Authenticode, visit Microsoft's
Authenticode
page or the excellent
Authenticode
FAQ page.
CryptoAPI 1.0 provides the underlying security services for the Microsoft
Internet Security Framework. CryptoAPI allows developers to integrate
cryptography into their applications.
Microsoft has given a great deal of
thought to the issue of security and it products, and Internet Explorer 4.0 is
no exception. From
"Security
Zones" to continued support and refinement of
Authenticode,
IE4 promises to be one of the safest browsers of all time. You can read
all about the security available in IE 4 at
http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie40/?/ie/ie40/features/ie-security.htm.
Also, check out what Microsoft is doing to keep
transactions
private with IE 4.
Video games can be very addicted. It can cause people to hurt themselves and kill themselves because they are so addicted. Many people eat so addicted to a game they only care about the game and nothing else. "Video games can be very addicting; in fact, some people accuse developers of making the games addictive on purpose. The following are 10 cases of video game addiction that get more and more extreme. 10 Skipping School skipping school.jpg I've skipped school before, but this kid takes the cake for the most elaborate excuse. A 15-year-old from Perth, Australia, skipped school to play online games for over 16 hours a day, over a full three weeks. How did he do this? Every morning he put on his school uniform until his mother went to work. As soon as she left, he would change out of it and started playing. His mother would return home after he was supposed to have come home from school. To cover for himself at school, he had informed the school he was having surgery. His parents finally caught on to his ruse when the school contacted them to check up on him. 9 Teen Burns Classmate firemage.jpg How many of us have gotten into a schoolyard scuffle? We've all been there, but a boy in Beijing took it to the next level. Apparently having lost himself in the game, World of Warcraft, he "became" a fire mage in his mind, and set his classmate on fire. For those who don't play World of Warcraft, I'm sure it's fairly easy to deduce what a fire mage does by putting two and two together. 8 Fifty-Hour Starcraft Session starcraft-2-logo.png I've pulled all-nighters before while playing games, but a man in South Korea almost pulled off three all-nighters…in a row. After a 50-hour Starcraft session, the South Korean man collapsed and died from heart failure. It was presumed that his death was caused by exhaustion, because he had only stopped to use the washroom and for short periods of sleep. There have been other cases in China where people have bee
