French and German government agencies have told people they should ditch Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, at least temporarily, because of a security hole that hackers are thought to have exploited on recent cyberattacks against Google and other companies. What should you do?

法国和德国的政府相关部门已经告知人民他们应该停止使用IE浏览器，至少是临时性停止，因为在最近Google和其他公司遭受的网络攻击中暴露了IE存在的一个漏洞。面对这种危险，你能做什么呢？

Switching to an alternative Web browser like Firefox or Google Chrome is one possibility. For now, security companies like McAfee have only identified the latest security exploit as an Internet Explorer issue, but there’s no guarantee that they won’t find vulnerabilities in other browsers that were involved in the broad attack on Google and others.

一种可能是换用其他可选的浏览器，比如火狐（Firefox）或者Google Chrome浏览器。到目前为止，像McAfee这样的安全公司只确认了最近的安全问题存在于IE浏览器，不过不保证黑客们找不到其他浏览器的弱点来进行类似对Google和其他公司的攻击。

Generally speaking, a browser switch is going to be a lot easier for an individual than it will be for corporate users, where IT policies often dictate which browser people use on their computers. Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant and security firm Sophos, said in a blog post Monday that companies may cause “more problems than it’s worth by summarily switching browsers” because of the potential for employee confusion and Web site compatibility problems caused by the new software.

一般来说，普通人换个浏览器比公司职员要容易很多，公司里一般会有IT政策规定人们电脑里用什么浏览器。Graham Cluley 是一家网络安全公司的资深技术顾问，他周一发表一篇博客说，公司如果立刻换浏览器的话有可能会造成“更大的问题”，因为新的软件可能会导致员工使用上以及网站在兼容性方面出现问题。

“My advice is to only switch from Internet Explorer if you really know what you are doing with the browser you’re swapping to,” Mr. Cluley said. “Otherwise it might be a case of ‘better the devil you know.’”

Cluley说“我的建议是如果你确定知道怎么使用要换的浏览器的话，不要用IE了，否则的话，就是‘暗箭难防’的活生生的例子。”

For people who don’t want to or can’t move to another browser from Internet Explorer, they should upgrade to the latest version of the software, Internet Explorer 8. While that version of the browser is also technically vulnerable to the security flaw it contains features that minimize the threat, Microsoft says.

对于那些不愿意或者不能换浏览器用的人来说，他们应该升级到最新的版本IE8。据微软说，虽然IE8仍然有可被攻击的技术弱点，不过它自身的特性可以把威胁降到最低。

And if switching to IE 8 isn’t an option, users with earlier versions of the browser, like IE 6, should adjust their security settings to “high,” which also reduces the risk of running malicious code, Microsoft says. There’s more in blog posts from Microsoft and McAfee describing the hack and precautions for users.

如果你不能升级到IE8，还在使用较早的版本，比如你是IE6的用户，那就应该把电脑的安全设定调成“高”，微软说这样也能降低恶意代码运行的风险。在微软和McAfee的博客里都有很多帖子写了这次的攻击和用户应该如何应对的内容。