Severity: High
8 April, 2008
Summary:
- This vulnerability affects: Internet Explorer 7 and earlier versions
- How an attacker exploits it: By enticing one of your users to visit a malicious Web page
- Impact: The attacker can execute code on your user’s computer, gaining complete control of it
- What to do: Deploy the appropriate Internet Explorer patches immediately
Exposure:
In a security bulletin released today as part of its monthly patch update, Microsoft describes a new vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer (IE) versions 5.01, 6.0, and 7.0. IE suffers from an unspecified memory corruption vulnerability involving the way it parses specially malformed data streams. By luring one of your users into visiting a maliciously crafted Web page, an attacker can exploit this memory corruption vulnerability to execute code on that user’s computer, inheriting that user’s privileges. Typically, Windows users have local administrative privileges; in such cases, the attacker could gain complete control of the victim’s computer.
In addition to fixing this new flaw, today’s Internet Explorer patch also fixes all previously known flaws.
Solution Path:
You should download, test, and deploy the appropriate IE patches as soon as possible.
- Internet Explorer 5.01 for Windows 2000
- Internet Explorer 6.0
-
- Microsoft no longer supports 98, ME, or XP SP1
- For Windows 2000
- For Windows XP w/SP2
- For Windows XP x64
- For Windows Server 2003
- For Windows Server 2003 x64
- For Windows Server 2003 Itanium-Edition
-
- Internet Explorer 7.0
For All WatchGuard Users:
These attacks travel as normal-looking HTTP traffic, which you must allow if your network users need to access the World Wide Web. Therefore, the patches above are your best solution.
Status:
Microsoft has released patches to fix these vulnerabilities.