Yeah well this has been all over the primetime news shows on german television. They all aired with the warning to not use IE / switch to a different browswr.

While this might not mean much to the average user of HN (read: tech literate) - i think it IS quite a big deal for "ordinary" computer users.

I think such warnings, from an official government body no less, will be heeded by many who don't know much and "just want to be safe"

Meanwhile MS choses to tell people that it "is not that bad" and that "not many users will be affected" and no word on when a patch is coming. This despite the fact that all current MS OSes (xp,vista,7) are exposed - is a PR disaster for MS.

Obviously MS is downplaying it but on the other side the BSI creates a huge stir to create the image that it is useful in someway and to avoid becoming an obscure agency that is mentioned only in passing in a couple of tech news articles. That's not to say that what they are doing is bad it's just that their are two sides and the ordinary computer user probably has still no idea what's going on.

the BSI isn't an obscure agency, it fills it's function well - e.g. ISO 27001 vs IT-Grundschutz certification, or newsletter with sec. warnings

Can you explain in more detail what it does?

The BSI is in the German media fairly regularly with advice about private and commercial information security and has a good reputation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Office_for_Information_...

Since it doubles as the German equivalent of the NSA, I don't think it is worried about justifying its existence.

But it's MICROSOFT! sigh

My job routinely requires me to utilize Internet Explorer, and I don't think it's all that bad to be honest. I also utilize Chrome and Firefox throughout my day. Is it a little slower? Sure. Is it kind of the big, ugly older sister of Firefox and Chrome? Absolutely. Beyond all that, though, it still works.