Version 7 of Internet Explorer Coming in Early Summer

Bill Gates just announced a summertime beta of Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP sp2. It'll be interesting to see what new security features are in it beyond the stuff in SP2. According to the announcement, there will be "stronger defenses against phishing, malware and spyware."

Poor ol' IE suffers from its own success: the bad guys work on exploits because it is so popular; and the software - by supporting powerful add-ins and rich ActiveX controls - makes itself vulnerable to security threats.

Of course it is hard for a computer to protect us from social engineering. When someone can convince you that their link or site is valid and a good thing to pursue, they've just bypassed one of the weakest links in security - people. It takes a specialty tracking programme, like anti-spyware to detect malicious code. The good news is that anti-spyware will be available at no extra charge when it comes out of beta.

Gates is also talking about one auto-update centre for all the various products instead of separate locations for Windows, Office, etc.