With a new version of Google Desktop

Dec 7, 2005 10:28 GMT  ·  By

Although Google was one of the first search engines to come up with a desktop search solution, it still found no better means of displaying the result of users' queries but by using a browser. Since most users still hang on to the Internet Explorer, what is a great search tool was struck by IE's security problems.

Recently, the Google Desktop and Internet Explorer tandem was proved to put users at risk of having their systems hijacked by hackers due to a security breach in IE's Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) implementation. This, combined with the search engine features, enabled a hacker to break through the defense system and run malicious code on that computer. Microsoft was supposed to do something about it, but Google stepped up to the challenge instead and patched the vulnerability by updating the search tool.

Google immediately issued an update and fixed their application to make this flaw useless for any malicious attempt. The search engine still made sure it highlighted once more that the vulnerability was caused by the Internet Explorer browser and not by the original version of the search application.