MS to release out-of-band patch for critical IE vulnerability

Users advised to patch ASAP.

Microsoft

is set to release an emergency out-of-band patch for the vulnerability in its

Internet Explorer

browser

reported

last week.

Attacks via the vulnerability have been shown to work on a wide range of

Windows

and

IE

variants, and have been widely seeded to both malicious websites and legitimate sites that have been compromised to display malicious content. As a result,

Microsoft

is releasing this patch outside of its normal monthly cycle of updates – the next scheduled release of which will not be until the second Tuesday in January.

The advance notification of the patch release can be found

here

. The advance notification will subsequently be replaced with a revised December bulletin containing both the out-of-band security bulletin and the security bulletins already released in

December’s ‘Patch Tuesday’

cycle.

Updates can be received through the Microsoft Update and Windows Update Services components or downloaded directly from the

Microsoft

site. Users are urged to ensure the updates are in place as soon as possible.

Posted on 17 December 2008 by

Virus Bulletin