Microsoft this week took to its Security Response Center blog to warn users about a vulnerability that the Redmond-based company has yet to patch.
Microsoft's Christopher Rudd published a post over at MSRC that details the recently posted Microsoft Security Advisory 972890, which discusses new, limited attacks against a Microsoft Video ActiveX Control affecting Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 users.
"Specifically, we’re aware of a code execution vulnerability within this control that can enable an attacker to run code as the logged-on user if they browse to a malicious site," writes Rudd. "We have an investigation into this issue under way as part of our Software Security Incident Response Process (SSIRP) and are working to develop a security update to address the issue," he added.
It's unusual for Microsoft to highlight a vulnerability without already having a fix for it. The company yesterday announced that it was investigating a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Video ActiveX Control. According to the announcement, an attacker who managed to successfully exploit the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user. That said, Microsoft does have an "in the meantime," band aid-type fix for the problem.
"In the meantime, our investigation has shown that there are no by-design uses for this ActiveX Control within Internet Explorer. Therefore, we’re recommending that all customers go ahead and implement the workaround outlined in the Security Advisory: setting all killbits associated with this particular control. While Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 customers are not affected by this vulnerability, we are recommending that they also set these killbits as a defense-in-depth measure. Once that killbit is set, any attempt by malicious websites to exploit the vulnerability would not succeed."
Check out Microsoft's security advisory for more information.
True, but the other parts of the IE structure allows for the easier installation of ActiveX plug-ins without the users knowledge. And has a greater ability to do damage to a system.
Also NPAPI runs just on the browser itself while ActiveX can run as part of other programs, esp. VB, thus making ActiveX a bigger security hole than NPAPI ad-ons which is restricted mainly to the browser.
People, wake up...
People, wake up...
True, but the other parts of the IE structure allows for the easier installation of ActiveX plug-ins without the users knowledge. And has a greater ability to do damage to a system.
Also NPAPI runs just on the browser itself while ActiveX can run as part of other programs, esp. VB, thus making ActiveX a bigger security hole than NPAPI ad-ons which is restricted mainly to the browser.
Why the hell if the ActiveX Control has no useful use, can be run remotely and can not be uninstalled?
no yet another reason to update you software,no one should be using IE6/7 anymore so if anything happens to them then its there own fault
(btw) the article doesn't seam to state this only effects IE6/7
Cmon people, let's move, the turn of the century was almost 10 years ago.
Back then loads of people replied that it was Apple who made buggy software and i already posted that the leak was possible to exploit in other ways and thus again making it a microsoft problem i got at least 6 thumbs down for that in under 4 hours.
Now here it is again the same activeX leak but this time nothing about quicktime lets see who shall we blame this time ?
It sounds like you take those 'thumb downs' rather personally.
Not really though it shows how intelligent the average Tom's hardware reader is.
This hits all versions of IE on XP, including 8. It may affect Vista as well, hence their warning. Forgetting the security issue at the moment, IE doesn't even comply to standards, so websites will look wrong in it. Its just a badly designed web browser that is as big as security hole as Quicktime is for a Mac.