Geoff Spick20 January 2010, 9:36 AM
Hot on the news of a major security flaw in Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Microsoft has finally got its act together as governments and security experts condemn its inaction.
As we
covered recently, Microsoft's elderly browsers are proving a rather easy tool for hackers to find their way into corporate systems. With both the French and German governments recommending Windows users stop using them or upgrade to another browser, and security companies cranking up the pressure, Microsoft has finally woken up to the danger and says it will be launching a fix as
soon as possible.
Out of schedule patches are pretty rare beasts, highlighting the severity of the threat. Microsoft says on the issue; "Based on our comprehensive monitoring of the threat landscape we continue to see very limited, and in some cases, targeted attacks.
"To date, the only successful attacks that we are aware of have been against Internet Explorer 6. We continue to recommend customers
upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 to benefit from the improved security protection it offers.
"We also recommend customers consider deploying the workarounds and mitigations provided in
Security Advisory 979352."
If you have a system which needs to use an earlier version of Internet Explorer or your company hasn't yet upgraded, then keep a keen eye out for the patch. And in the meantime, following the advice of the German and French governments to use an alternative browser such as
Firefox or
Chrome for tasks that don't absolutely require Internet Explorer would definitely be a good idea.