[gopher] The mystery is solved -- why IE6 works for Gopher in some places, and not others

[Cameron Kaiser <spectre@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Burn in hell, Gates. If you aren't there already, I'll personally provide
the bullet train.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-047.asp

If gopher is preferred (of course it is!), read

gopher://gopher.floodgap.com/0/gopher/ms02-047

This appears to be the reason why Internet Explorer 6 works for some people
and not others -- the patch referenced by MS02-047 (Q323759) actually, by
default, turns the Gopher service off *completely* in order to cover their
collective fanny for an earlier buffer overrun gaffe dating from 5.01 that
was not fixed until 6. It does claim to fix the buffer overrun, though (so,
uh, why disable it if it's fixed?). The versions I have on my testing PCs all
are patched, and they have historically been unable to get Gopher access.

If people are using IE6 to successfully browse gopherspace, please report if
you have Q323759 installed (it should be under About Internet Explorer).

There is a registry key setting that will turn Gopher back on (detailed
in the article), and I'm going to test it out tonight on both Windows 98 and
Windows 2000 under Virtual PC on my desktop Macintosh. If others get the
notion to give it a whirl, please advise if it works for you.

-- 
---------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
 Cameron Kaiser, Floodgap Systems Ltd * So. Calif., USA * ckaiser@xxxxxxxxxxxx
-- High explosives are applicable where truth and logic fail. -- Marcello Corno