Internet Explorer Clipboard Security Hole: How to Protect Your PC

Oscar Sodani is a founder of Help2Go and owner of Help2Go Networks, an IT consulting firm in the Washington D.C. area. Oscar holds the CISSP certification as well as industry certifications from Microsoft, Cisco and Novell.

Internet Explorer has an alarming "feature" that allows web sites to read what is in your Windows Clipboard. (Your Windows Clipboard contains the last text that you copied or cut for pasting)

Any malicious web site can not only read this data, but also steal it for their own purposes. Now normally, you're not going to have super-sensitive data in your clipboard, but if you ever copy and paste information like usernames, passwords, a social security number or the like, you are leaving yourself open to this data theft. Luckily, it's simple to stop IE from sharing your Clipboard with the Internet.

You can check to see if your web browser is vulnerable by copying some text into your clipboard and going to this site, which first reported the problem. (If that site is not working, try our mirror)

Neither site collects your information - it will just display what is on your clipboard. However, collecting the information is very possible, so turn off this feature ASAP. Here's how:

• Open Internet Explorer
• Click on the Tools menu
• Choose Internet Options
• Click the Security tab
• Click on the Custom Level button
• Under the Scripting section, find the option for Allow Paste Operations via Script
• Choose Disable
• Click OK and click Yes in the pop-up box that asks you to confirm.

Of course, the best solution is to stop using Internet Explorer altogether and use a more secure browser such as Mozilla Firefox.

Source: JerryandMissy.com  

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