On 4/10/07 12:14, in article , "Stewart Robert
Hinsley" wrote:
snip
Flash is a browser plugin that displays (possibly interactive)
animations (.swf files). It is often misused to display static images.
(If you want to use part of static images as links the appropriate
method is to use the MAP feature of HTML.
I don't know how dangerous Flash is - for all I know it might be
properly sandboxed[1] and robustly designed against buffer overrun
attacks[2] and other exploits[3] - but it seems to be disabled when
other active content is disabled. (In general allowing web sites to
execute arbitrary software on your computer is a bad idea.)
JavaScript is not the same as Java. There is a connection in that
JavaScript supports scripting of Java applets, but the relationship is
much more tenuous that the names suggest.
JavaScript is a client side scripting language. The proper use of
JavaScript is for interactive web sites (to save on bandwidth and server
CPU cycles). (I think that JavaScript can also be used as server side
scripting language, but PHP, PERL, ASP, etc, are more commonly used for
that purpose.)
Both Java Applets and JavaScript are supposed to be properly sandboxed.
[1] sandboxed - confined to using a reduced set of the capabilities of
your computer so that it can do any harm if it is maliciously or
incompetently programmed.
[2] buffer overrun attack - in an insufficiently defensively programmed
piece of software a malicious user can write, say, 110 characters where
only 100 is allowed for. This overwrites other data; depending on what
the data is it can have severe effects.
[3] exploit - a means of defeating the security features of a computer.
I don't think I'd grasped how dangerous it is out there!! I'm extremely
cautious about emails with attachments but this sounds v. worrying! Thank
you for bothering to go into all this, though. I'm beginning to get a faint
grasp of the essentials.
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'