The programming language JavaScript emerged 25 years ago and has grown to become one of the most important pieces of the web and browser applications we use today. From a report: JavaScript is the go-to language for front-end development and has spawned Microsoft’s Typescript, a superset of JavaScript with a stronger optional type system for developers that compiles to JavaScript when…
Tag: Internet Explorer
Microsoft Adds Option To Disable JScript In Internet Explorer
As part of the October 2020 Patch Tuesday security updates, Microsoft has added a new option to Windows to let system administrators disable the JScript component inside Internet Explorer. ZDNet reports: The JScript scripting engine is an old component that was initially included with Internet Explorer 3.0 in 1996 and was Microsoft’s own dialect of the ECMAScript standard (the JavaScript language)….
Bill Gates: ‘I Was Naive At Microsoft,’ Didn’t Realize Success Would Bring Antitrust Scrutiny
Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates told CNBC on Wednesday morning he had been naive about the government scrutiny that comes with getting large when he was running Microsoft and said the chance of Big Tech antitrust regulation is “pretty high.” CNBC reports: “Whenever you get to be a super-valuable company, affecting the way people communicate and even political discourse…
Microsoft’s ‘Patch Tuesday’ Includes 129 Security Updates, Mostly to Windows
This week Krebs on Security reported that Microsoft “released updates to remedy nearly 130 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating system and supported software.” None of the flaws are known to be currently under active exploitation, but 23 of them could be exploited by malware or malcontents to seize complete control of Windows computers with little or no help from users….
Firefox Will Add a New Drive-by-Download Protection
Mozilla will add a new security feature to Firefox in October that will make it harder for malicious web pages to initiate automatic downloads and plant malware-laced files on a user’s computer. From a report: Called a drive-by download, this type of attack has been around for two decades and usually takes place when users visit a website that contains malicious…
Can Firefox Be Saved?
“Even with another infusion of cash from Google, you have to wonder just how long Firefox will survive as a viable, mainstream web browser,” argues ZDNet contributing editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols:
I’ve been using Mozilla’s Firefox browser since it was still in beta. In 2004, for a while, it was my favorite web browser. Not because it was open-source, but because it…
Chrome for Android May Soon Send Notifications Reminding You To Use Chrome
An anonymous reader shares a report: For years now, Google Chrome has been an absolute dominant force in the world of web browsers, but since the relaunch of Microsoft Edge based on Google’s Chromium, that position has been challenged. Now, Google is preparing to drive more Android owners back to using Chrome through targeted notifications. Over the admittedly brief history of…
The Sandboxie Windows Sandbox Isolation Tool Is Now Open-Source
Cybersecurity firm Sophos announced today that it has open-sourced the Sandboxie Windows sandbox-based isolation utility 15 years after it was released. Bleeping Computer reports: Sandboxie was initially developed by Ronen Tzur and released on June 26, 2004, as a simple utility to help run Internet Explorer within a secure and isolated sandbox environment. Later, Tzur upgraded Sandboxie to also support sandboxing…
Consider Switching From Internet Explorer, Says US Homeland Security
Slashdot reader SmartAboutThings writes: While Microsoft Edge is right on track to replace Internet Explorer, it seems that the last one is a bigger security liability then you may think. In a newly released advisory, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) [an agency within America’s Department of Homeland Security] is warning users about an IE vulnerability. To keep your personal…
Are Software Designers Ignoring The Needs of the Elderly?
“[A]t the very time that it’s become increasingly difficult for anyone to conduct their day to day lives without using the Net, some categories of people are increasingly being treated badly by many software designers,” argues long-time Slashdot reader Lauren Weinstein: The victims of these attitudes include various special needs groups — visually and/or motor impaired are just two examples —…