Internet Explorer (the joke)

My son sent me this today:

Internet Explorer users at risk from major bug

“All four users have been informed” a source said.

I thought that it was a joke until I subsequently saw this. (Obviously it is a joke but the problem clearly isn’t).

While IE usage is not as high as it once was it it still high enough that this is going to affect many people, particularly as the bug seems to be in versions 6 through 11.

Setting aside the issue itself this, and the recent Heartbleed bug, highlights just how easy it is for bugs to go undetected for years, even when the source code is available for all to inspect as it was in the latter case.

Why is this? In my opinion the answer is pretty simple – code is written by humans and they are fallible. This is why in all the places I have worked the only reliable way of trapping as many bugs as possible has been peer review, not just of the code but also right from the first steps when the requirements were laid down.

To be fair I am not sure that would have made any difference in the case of the Internet Explorer bug but would have with Heartbleed.

Photo Jeff Wilcox

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