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Microsoft admits anti-phishing flaw in IE7

Flaw in IE7 anti-phishing technology could slow computers to a crawl.

By Rene Millman, 18 Dec 2006 at 16:54

Microsoft has admitted that the new anti-phishing feature in its latest browser may cause computers to grind to a halt.

In an advisory on its web site, the company said that when users go to a web page using Internet Explorer 7, "the computer may respond very slowly as the Phishing Filter evaluates Web page contents."

"Internet Explorer 7 evaluates the whole web page when you browse a frame. Therefore, CPU usage may be very high," it admitted. The company has quietly rushed out an update to the browser to fix the problem.

The new browser was released in October this year with protection against phishing site a priority for the company. Rival browser Firefox also features anti-phishing filters where the browser checks the page against a blacklist of active scam sites. IE7 checks in the web site with Microsoft in order to find out if a site is legitimate.

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