After years of decline and a final wind-down over the past 13 months, on Wednesday Microsoft confirmed the retirement of Internet Explorer, the company’s long-lived and increasingly notorious web browser. Launched in 1995, IE came preinstalled on Windows computers for almost two decades, and like Windows XP, Internet Explorer became a mainstay—to the point that when it was time for users to upgrade and move on, they often didn’t. And while last week’s milestone will push even more users off the historic browser, security researchers emphasize that IE and its many security vulnerabilities are far from gone. |
Microsoft says it will still support IE’s underlying browser engine, known as “MSHTML,” and it has its eye on versions of Windows still “used in critical environments.” But Maddie Stone, a researcher for Google’s Project Zero vulnerability hunting team, points out that hackers are still exploiting IE vulnerabilities in real-world attacks. |
