Emergency IE Patch today

By admin | January 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Microsoft has announced that today (Thursday 21st January) at approximately 6pm UK time, it will release an emergency out-of band patch to fix the Internet Explorer zero day security vulnerability that has been used by attackers in various high-profile targeted attacks, specifically the recent Trojan.Hydraq attacks waged against Google and a number of other companies.

The vulnerability affects Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, which make up the bulk of the versions used today. However, the only in-the-wild exploit code for this vulnerability detected thus far is confirmed to affect just Internet Explorer 6.

Based on our in-the-field detections, this security vulnerability has only been used in a very limited number of targeted attacks so far, however they appear to be very high profile attacks. The most likely attack vector used in the incidents seen thus far is targeted e-mails containing legitimate looking attachments or links to Web sites sent to high-level employees. When the attachment is opened, an exploit for the vulnerability springs into action and the computer becomes infected.

Despite the fact that we’ve seen just limited attacks using this vulnerability, with exploit code public, there is no reason to think we won’t see more attack attempts. And you can be sure bad guys are working overtime to create reliable exploits for the other affected versions of Internet Explorer, namely 7 and 8.

This security hole is so dangerous because it allows for remote exploitation. This means attackers can run any malicious code of their liking on a victim’s machine by taking advantage of the vulnerability.”

We strongly encourage users to patch their systems against this vulnerability. In addition, businesses are encouraged to consider implementing an automated patch management solution to help mitigate risk.

Dominic Cook

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