UK ignores fears over Internet Explorer despite French and German warnings

The British government and armed forces are to continue their widespread use of the version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser that was attacked by Chinese hackers who broke into Google's corporate network – even though both the French and German governments have advised people to stop using it.

The Cabinet Office, which oversees the deployment of computers in government, said today that "it doesn't think the issue [of being open to hacking] would be resolved any better by going elsewhere".

But over the weekend the German government advised citizens to stop using any version of Internet Explorer because of the possibility of attacks against it which could compromise the user's computer without their knowledge – and lead to the theft of data or incursions into corporate networks.

Today, the French government followed suit, issuing an advisory suggesting that all versions of Internet Explorer, which is included with Windows, are vulnerable to the attack that was used against Google, Adobe and an estimated 30 other western companies, by hackers originating in China.

Google said the attacks were used to steal intellectual property and compromise email accounts, and identified Internet Explorer as the weak point that was exploited.

The specific version of the browser known to be vulnerable to the attack mounted on Google is Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), which was first released in 2000 and is standard on Windows XP, which was released in 2001. Despite its age and known weakness to hacking, IE6 is still the most widely used browser in the world, ahead of newer, more secure versions and rivals' alternatives such as the free Firefox, Opera or Safari browsers.

IE6 is extensively used by the British government, including UK armed forces: in response to parliamentary questions asked last year by Labour MP and former Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson, the Ministry of Defence, which has 300,000 desktops worldwide (including ships), said it was sticking with IE6, "and at the current time does not have a requirement to move to an updated version".

Watson said today: "The government's own advice to businesses and consumers, through its Get Safe Online site that it helps to fund, is to not use IE6. So other than the fact that they aren't taking their own advice, it's preposterous that they wouldn't take this threat seriously. With the added security threat, all departments should certainly ditch IE6 and upgrade."

Microsoft sought to play down the risks of the vulnerability in a blog posting on Sunday, saying that "we are only seeing very limited number of targeted attacks against a small subset of corporations. The attacks that we have seen to date, including public proof-of-concept exploit code, are only effective against Internet Explorer 6."

However both the French and German government advisories say that there are weaknesses on newer versions of Internet Explorer on all versions of Windows, including the recently released Windows 7.