Fergie's Tech Blog

Zero-Day Treasure Hunt: Researcher Hides IE Attack on The Web

Robert McMillan writes on InfoWorld:

Security researcher Aviv Raff has published code that would allow someone to take control of a computer running Internet Explorer, but there's a catch. He's not saying exactly where he's hidden the attack.

"Somewhere in my blog, I embedded a proof-of-concept code that exploits this zero-day vulnerability," Raff wrote in a Wednesday blog posting. A zero-day attack is a previously undisclosed software flaw that has not been fixed by the software maker.

The bug, which affects Internet Explorer 7 and IE 8, could allow an attacker to run unauthorized software on a victim's computer. Raff informed Microsoft of the flaw on Tuesday and the software vendor has not yet patched it, Raff said.

Microsoft didn't get much time to fix the bug, but Raff said he didn't feel that Microsoft would address the issue quickly unless he went public with the vulnerability.

posted by Fergie @ 5/07/2008 03:05:00 PM