I was checking out Steve Gibson's website looking for new updates on his
site, and I tried the "browser header" feature. To my surprise, the header
information contained the usual information, plus an MS IE6 patch number
that I have recently applied!

User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Q312461)

Why in the world does MS want the web servers of the world to know if the
browser is patched or not ??? I believe this is a great security risk which
would allow hacker's websites or a spammer/social engineer sending html
email to know the level of patching on the user's machine, and then hack
accordingly.

I have only noticed this browser header behavior after I applied the latest
IE6 cumulative patch Q312461.


For Steve Gibson's browser header check, goto:
http://nanoprobe.grc.com/x/ne.dll?qg0diq1u
-----------
Omar Koudsi
IT Architect
Network Security Center
Special Systems Company
http://security.sscjo.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tel: (9626) 5664221
Fax: (9626) 5681557

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