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I remember IE was required for the South Korean government issued digital certificate (required for all internet-based retail transactions and likely others).

I remember IE was required for the South Korean government issued digital certificate (required for all internet-based retail transactions and likely others). I guess I had assumed that the standard was compatible with newer versions of Windows or MS browsers. Really sad if it isn’t.

freeone3000 6y ago
It's ActiveX-based, which essentially runs nowhere but IE. Edge's support for ActiveX is running it in an IE tab.
- thephyber 6y ago
  Yes, I roughly understand the limitations of the existing implementation. but it is not the only browser or platform and it’s not like the S Korean government is not capable of noticing the market share / cybersecurity trends of the past decade+.
  - coldcode 6y ago
    I was under the impression that SK was a technologically advanced country. I guess not the government then.
bawolff 6y ago
I wonder why they needed an active x control for that. TLS/SSL client certificates have been supported by all browsers since basically forever, going back even further than active x.
- thephyber 6y ago
  If I had to guess, HTTPS / SSL was governed by US export restrictions above a certain strength so S Korea managed to use the existing extensibility built into the browser the government wanted to support.
neom 6y ago
For some things in SK you have to download a bunch of weird proprietary government .exe's that seem to only run in conjunction with specific combinations of windows and IE. I was pretty shocked when my wife and I went to get our marriage certificate from the government, and going to get our marriage certificate was finding an old windows NT system at her college library that everyone used to do their government related .exe stuff. We had to download 2 or 3 apps to do it, I'm not even sure what they all did, just a bunch of programs you had to run in a specific order, some of them provided iFrame type windows to logins, it was really strange.

freeone3000 6y ago

It's ActiveX-based, which essentially runs nowhere but IE. Edge's support for ActiveX is running it in an IE tab.

thephyber 6y ago
Yes, I roughly understand the limitations of the existing implementation. but it is not the only browser or platform and it’s not like the S Korean government is not capable of noticing the market share / cybersecurity trends of the past decade+.
- coldcode 6y ago
  I was under the impression that SK was a technologically advanced country. I guess not the government then.

bawolff 6y ago

I wonder why they needed an active x control for that. TLS/SSL client certificates have been supported by all browsers since basically forever, going back even further than active x.

thephyber 6y ago
If I had to guess, HTTPS / SSL was governed by US export restrictions above a certain strength so S Korea managed to use the existing extensibility built into the browser the government wanted to support.

neom 6y ago

For some things in SK you have to download a bunch of weird proprietary government .exe's that seem to only run in conjunction with specific combinations of windows and IE. I was pretty shocked when my wife and I went to get our marriage certificate from the government, and going to get our marriage certificate was finding an old windows NT system at her college library that everyone used to do their government related .exe stuff. We had to download 2 or 3 apps to do it, I'm not even sure what they all did, just a bunch of programs you had to run in a specific order, some of them provided iFrame type windows to logins, it was really strange.