Switchfast Blog: The Future of IT
Microsoft Announces IE Security Hole Believed to be Involved in Google Attacks
Friday, January 15, 2010 by Michael Holley
Microsoft sent out a bulletin yesterday announcing the existence
of a new vulnerability in IE that could let to remote code
execution. The hole was discovered during the investigation of the
alleged Chinese attacks on Google and many other tech companies
that has been all over the news the past few days.
Microsoft says that "Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 on
Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, and Internet Explorer 6,
Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 on supported editions
of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server
2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 are affected."
Microsoft is working on a fix for this issue, but acknowledged
that it may not be released until next month. Fortunately, in order
for someone to com promise your system with this hole, you must be
tricked into clicking a link to download malicious javascript. So
if your antivirus is updated and you take normal precautions about
which links to click, you should be fine.
The attack that compromised Google et al's systems is said to
have been extremely sophisticated to the point that an attack of
such quality had never been made on a corporate level.
Read Microsoft's security advisory here.
Best,
Michael Holley
Switchfast Technologies
Chicago IT Consulting
& Support
Rochester
IT Consulting & Support
Leave comment: