New IE5 security hole leaves PCs wide open to hacking

The latest addition to IE5's list of security 'issues' is a corker. The problem, detailed by Microsoft here, allows a "malicious Web site operator" to gain access to the computers of people visiting the site. It uses the IE5 "download behaviour" feature, which is intended to allow Web page authors to download files for use in client-side scripts. This is intended only to apply to files in the same domain, but a server-side redirect can be used to bypass this. The net effect is that our malicious operator (who are these people anyway? - name the names) can get access to files on both the user's machine and the user's local intranet. There isn't a fix so far, although MS says it's working on a patch. In the meantime, it recommends stopping the download behaviour by disabling Active Scripting. A helpful Register reader who's done this reports that it isn't necessarily the ideal solution. He sends us a GIF of what happened after he applied Microsoft's workaround - it's an error message saying "An ActiveX control on this page is not safe. Your current security settings prohibit running unsafe controls on this page. As a result, this page may not display as intended." As far as we can see, apart from the error message, it doesn't display at all... ®