Privacy, Security & Virus Information

Major Focused Virus Attack Hits Internet Explorer 6

Towards the end of last week a major virus attack was reported to have focused itself on Internet Explorer 6 running on Windows XP, although industry sources later reported that it appeared that the virus looked like it was also being modified and could possibly attack more recent versions of Microsoft's highly popular browser.

Fears are that any hacker could pick up the code originally used to attack IE6 and adapt it accordingly. Also believed to being targeted by the attack are industry leaders Adobe Systems, as well as Yahoo, Northrop Grumman and Dow Chemicals.

Microsoft has rushed out security advisory on the IE security flaw and the possibility is yet to be ruled out that an emergency "out-of-cycle" patch to seal up the security gap will be issued, despite Microsoft's next set of security patches not being due till the 9th of February. This is more than three weeks away and will give hackers too much time to take full advantage of the flaw. On the upside, security experts have projected that exploiting the flaw would be very difficult on Windows Vista or Windows 7 systems, due to their advanced memory protection technology.

According to a spokesman from McAfee, Microsoft will have little option but to release a repair patch, since the IE6 is currently too vulnerable and will provide rich pickings for computer hackers. On Friday 15th, Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, advised users to work through an alternative browser until Microsoft fixes the issue.

Industry experts predict that repairing the flaw might not prove to be too easy, because Microsoft's team not only has to repair the chink in their armour but must also ensure that the hackers are not capable of creating another one that can also infiltrate the other three versions of its browser. Information online is that the hackers behind this latest virus are from China, making it difficult, if not impossible, to trace them.

A spokesman for Microsoft hastened to point out that while their Internet Explorer and especially version 6 was currently vulnerable, every other browser also has its security issue and while switching, even temporarily, to another may be tempting, it could expose computer users to another series of risks.

 
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