Except the United States, the market share of IE 6 in Australia, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway is all below 1%, while the market share of IE 6 hovers around 1%, including the Czech Republic, Mexico, Ukraine, Portugal and the Philippines. Roger Capriotti, marketing director of Microsoft IE, expressed the hope that the news represented that more and more developers and IT experts could regard IE 6 as a low-priority browser and stop spending time on this old browser.
Here, we summarized five reasons why IE6 faded out:
1, computer security is at risk.
Some time ago, more than 20 other companies, such as Google and Yahoo, were attacked by hackers, who took advantage of the loopholes in IE. According to statistics, most of the users attacked by this attack are Windows XP users running IE6 browser, which means that running IE6 browser will threaten the security of computers at any time. If hackers steal your information before upgrading IE6, it will be too late, especially if your computer contains sensitive customer data.
Governments all over the world suggest changing browsers.
At present, the German and French governments have issued announcements warning citizens to use IE with caution, and advising them to change their browsers as soon as possible, especially users of IE6 browsers.
Even Microsoft advises users to give up using IE6 browser.
IE 6, which was released in August of 200 1 year, has survived for many years. Because the new network technology needs to match the modern browser, Google first announced that its YouTube no longer supports IE 6 in 2009, and other services will stop supporting IE 6 in the following year. Microsoft also called on users to upgrade to an updated version through the countdown to ie6.
In its security research and defense blog, Microsoft pointed out that in order to avoid the risk of attack, users had better be able to upgrade IE6 browser and Windows XP system, or enable data execution prevention (DEP) function.
This is not the first time that Microsoft has advised users to upgrade the old version of software, but it is the first time that Microsoft has advised users to upgrade due to specific defects.
According to IE 6countdown.com, at present, the country with the highest proportion of using ie6 in the world is China, which still has a market share of 25.2%, and the lowest is Norwegian 0.2%. At present, the market share of IE 6 in the United States is 0.9%, and that in Taiwan Province Province has dropped from 10.7% in March last year to 4.9% at present. According to the survey. Net application, in February this year, the global market share of IE 6 was 7.33%, ranking the fifth largest browser version. The top four were 27.34% of IE 8, 12.28% of Firefox, 1 1.48% of IE 9, and 8.5% of Chrome 15.
4. Not wanting to give up Windows XP is not a legal excuse to give up IE6 upgrade.
One way to give up IE6 is to upgrade Windows XP to Windows Vista or Windows 7, which are running IE7 and IE8 browsers.
As we all know, the performance of Windows Vista operating system is really unsatisfactory, which can really be the reason why Windows XP is unwilling to upgrade. But Windows 7 is a very stable, safe and reliable operating system, and users have no reason not to upgrade. Of course, upgrading Windows 7 does cost some money, but it is much more cost-effective than data theft.
This will not be the last large-scale security vulnerability attack triggered by IE6.
Before Google was hacked by China, the outside world knew nothing about this vulnerability in IE browser, and it was not the first vulnerability to be exploited in IE browser. According to statistics, up to now, IE6 has at least 142 vulnerabilities, of which 22 have not been patched. Therefore, this attack will not be the last large-scale security vulnerability attack triggered by IE6.
In view of this latest IE 0day vulnerability (979352), Microsoft Security Research Center made a risk assessment, and the assessment results showed that with the upgrade of IE and Windows systems, the risk level decreased. The green area in the figure below indicates that although it is affected by the vulnerability, it has the ability to resist attacks that exploit the vulnerability.
Similarly, domestic security companies have also proved through tests that although the combination of Windows 7+IE8 will also be affected by this vulnerability, it can be prevented from taking effect by relying on its own security measures; On the contrary, XP SP3+IE6 has no power to fight back.
Of course, the negative impact of IE browser vulnerabilities has also been amplified. Tony Bradley, editor of Computerworld, a famous website, wrote, "The problem with giving up IE as a countermeasure is that it further deepens the wrong security awareness. We must know that other browsers, programs or operating systems are also imperfect, especially if hackers have special purposes and use high-end technology. " Bradley's implication is that it is unwise to abandon IE.
In addition, George Stathakopoulos, general manager of Microsoft Trusted Computing Group, issued a statement saying: "We are still vigilant against these attacks and hope that our users can protect themselves in an appropriate way. Therefore, we recommend that users who are still using IE6 and IE7 upgrade their browsers to IE8 as soon as possible. Users who are still using Windows XP SP2 also need to upgrade their browsers to IE8 and enable data execution prevention (DEP), or directly upgrade their operating systems to Windows XP SP3 (DEP can be enabled automatically). "
Although a large-scale attack exploiting this vulnerability has not yet appeared, there is no guarantee that it will not come, so upgrade your IE6 browser. Of course, we also need to pay attention to the automatic update of the operating system and the recent security tips. Microsoft may release relevant security patches before the "patch day" next month.