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People hate IE6; they’ve made that abundantly clear on the web. Unfortunately, plenty of people are still stuck using it for reasons such as their work not letting them upgrade. So Google is doing something about it.

Chrome Frame is a new browser plug-in developed by Google to give you a Chrome browsing experience inside of Internet Explorer. LOL… seriously: Chrome Frame turns IE into Chrome.

It’s freakin hilarious that Google seems to hates IE so much that it has spent its own time “improving it”. You could also read that as “spent it’s own time to destroy it”.  Product Manager Mike Smith and Software Engineer Alex Russell, say that they simply want to make a more seamless web experience for both web users and developers. RIGHT… whatever… if it helps kill IE6 off the web I’m all for it.

So what is this thing? It’s just a plug-in that creates a new frame inside of IE that IS the Chrome browser. The plug-in itself is only about 500K, but then it must download around 10 MB of Chrome-related data to work correctly on a machine (I assume a one time download). The look will be so seamless that a user shouldn’t realize they’re not simply browsing with their regular old version of IE… except that it’ll be hell-a-faster and standards compliant.

To target the Chrome plug-in for IE, developers simply have to insert a meta tag in their HTML code. If Chrome Frame isn’t found, the page will render just as it normally would in IE.

Chrome Frame will work with IE6, IE7, and IE8 on any Windows-based machine.

So this is obviously wicked cool, and Microsoft’s response should be just as cool as well!!!!

You can find Google Chrome Frame here. And learn more in the video below.

As he had already predicted, cracker Charlie Miller has won the PWN2OWN contest by cracking Safari and Mac OS X within seconds of the start of the competition. “It took a couple of seconds. They clicked on the link and I took control of the machine,” Miller said after his accomplishment. He took home the USD 10000 prize, as well as the MacBook he performed the exploit on. Internet Explorer 8 fell a while later by cracker Nils, who also cracked Safari and Firefox after being done with IE8.

Miller cracked Safari running on a fully patched installation of Mac OS X on a MacBook. The details of the exploit will not be given out until Apple has published a patch to ensure that others don’t run with the exploit and abuse it. This is the second year in a row that Safari on the Mac is the first to fall in the PWN2OWN contest, again by Miller’s hands.

A while after, Internet Explorer 8, running on Windows 7, also fell. Windows 7 was running on a Sony Vaio P, and was cracked by a cracker named Nils, who wishes to remain anonymous. He also won a cash prize and got to keep the Vaio P. Several Microsoft security folk were on sight to witness the exploit. This exploit is also kept under wraps until Microsoft releases a patch. Later on, Nils also broke into Safari (Mac) and Firefox.

All the cracks happened on day one of the contest, which means the operating systems and browsers were fully patched, with no additional plugins loaded. So far, only Chrome hasn’t been cracked yet, but that probably won’t take long, seeing how quick the first browsers were exploited.

Still on the table… this year’s contest will also offer a $10,000 prize for every vulnerability successfully exploited in Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian, and the iPhone and BlackBerry OSes. The competition runs through Friday… so it ain’t over yet.

CanSecWest PWN2OWN

Internet Explorer 8 can be installed on Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Vista, Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2).

Here are some end-user features you can expect to see in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1.

On this page:
Activities
WebSlices
Favorites Bar
Automatic Crash Recovery
Improved Phishing Filter

Download IE8 beta.