Reputation Management Online

While Google and China battle it out with threats and innuendos after the great Google hack in China, we now have the weakest link of ‘em all in this murky affair unveiled – Microsoft and its browser IE!

Microsoft has now admitted this and has even come out with a warning about the critical unpatched vulnerability in the IE.  Mike Reavey, director of Microsoft’s Security Response Center (MSRC) had this to say:

“We have determined that Internet Explorer was one of the vectors used in targeted and sophisticated attacks against Google and possibly other corporate networks”

For Microsoft, admitting this is the first step in damage control and they have gone on record with a security warning which Computer World reported as shown below:

 The security advisory said that the only version of IE not containing the critical flaw was IE 5.01 running on Windows 2000. All other versions, including IE6, IE7 and IE8 on Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 are vulnerable to attack.

A patch for the vulnerability may miraculously arrive any minute now  as part of crisis mangement from Microsoft. After all Google’s threat is keenly watched the world over and for an Internet giant like Microsoft there’s nothing as big as a security flaw in terms of reputation mangement.

In other Microsoft news today, Steve Ballmer has announced that Microsoft intends to continue to stay in China and obey the country’s rules. (yawn)

The interesting question now is -Will Google really pull out of China after China has scoffed at Google’s threat saying that they are going to continue filtering Google content come what may?

Google and China - the tussle continues and further developments on this front may just take the heat off of Microsoft for now.