Cloud based data management

Internet Explorer users have been told to ditch the application and switch to another browser, pronto.

The warning comes from Rapid7, which describes a hole that’s exploitable by visiting a malicious Website (and, of course, in the world of Twitter and shortened URLs, it’s so much easier to get users to visit such sites).

The discoverer of the exploit, Eric Romang, says the zero-day drops a file, Exploit.html, on the target. This, in turn, creates files with img and swf suffixes, which IE treats as Flash.

Romang claims the exploit was created by the same group – Nitro – that recently released a Java zero-day into the wild.

Rapid7’s HD Moore, also chief architect of Metasploit, told Ars that he’s surprised to see the exploit work across Windows Vista and 7: “This is one of the few times that a vulnerability has been successfully exploited across all the production shipping versions of the browser and OS”, he said. The attack bypasses ASLR – address space layout randomization – that’s meant to help defend the newer operating systems against attack.

Microsoft is looking at the exploit now, and has stated that it will “take the necessary steps” once it has a fix ready. ®

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