Internet Explorer Targeted in Attacks

An unpatched exploit in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is being used in online attacks.   The attack comes from what’s  known as a web drive-by in which a user visits a webpage that contains the attack code.

The attack allows criminals to access users browsers and web apps without their permission or knowledge.  Microsoft yet to release an update to fix the flaw which lies in IE’s MTHML parsing software, even though the vulnerability was published two months ago. The flaw allows for code injection, which means that once an attacker gains access they can run their own code on the targeted machine.

Google and Microsoft recommend downloading the fixit tool until an official patch is released. You can download it here.

No one is saying who is being targeted or why, could be robots, could be WATSON gone rouge, could be people stealing credit card info. So for the time being you should download the patch, just to be on the safe side.

Internet Explorer 9 Releasing March 14th

 

Microsoft has announced that the final version of Internet Explorer 9 will be released on March 14th. The new version of IE includes some much needed support for HTML5 and CSS3, which are the current working web standards used by developers. The new version of Internet Explorer will also have some security improvements, a new really fast JavaScript engine and hardware accelerated graphics.

What does all this alphabet soup mean to you? Well I’ve used the recent release candidate for IE9 and I can tell you from first hand experience that it is fast, it’s got a much smoother Chrome-like interface and seems to be well beyond what I think people are expecting.  The added security and web standards adoption means that users will have to download less plugins and be able to search with confidence and ease.

Check the link for an article over at ZDnet.Article: Microsoft promises final IE 9 to be downloadable on March 14