Microsoft Says No To WebKit For Internet Explorer; ActiveX Still Matters

March 19, 2009

Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft is not yet worried about the recent security breaches in IE8

Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft is not yet worried about the recent security breaches in IE8

After his keynote at the MIX09 conference, I chat with Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft about the future of Internet Explorer.

First off, Hachamovitch quickly brushed off the idea of adopting the WebKit engine – used in Apple Safari and Google Chrome – to replace the homegrown Trident engine.

The Microsoft executive also touched on the company’s Research Lab Gazelle engine “that is not a replacement for Internet Explorer’s engine but is actually using it.”

Second, despite pushing for smaller “add-ons” for its Accelerator, Web Slices or Visual Search suggestions, Microsoft is not abandoning ActiveX. “ActiveX is still going to be used for super rich applications,” confirms Hachamovitch.

On the latest security issue affecting IE8, Microsoft is still evaluating how the hackers breached the browser’s security and if the hackers made any “assumptions” for their brute force attacks. “I also want to remind you that all the browsers were taken down. It was not just IE8. But also Safari and Firefox,” adds Hachamovitch.


[MIX09] Day 2 Internet Explorer 8 To Officially Launch; But Security Already Breached

March 19, 2009

ie8logoIt’s all about Internet Explorer 8 today at Mix09.

At a keynote (in a couple minutes), Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft, will formally unveil the browser; which can be downloaded here. You can learn more about IE8 features here.

Internet Explorer 8 security is already breached

A day earlier, a hacker attending the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver ran a successful exploit against IE8, defying Microsoft’s latest built in protection technologies- DEP (Data Execution Prevention) as well as ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization).

The exploit was done during the PWN2OWN hacking contest held at CanSecWest and sponsored by security company TippingPoint; which started the Zero Day Initiative “rewarding security researchers for responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities.”

Security is one of Microsoft’s major talking point for the IE8 release. Oh, well… next time :-)


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