Operation Aurora - Assessing Risk of IE 0day Vulnerability

Via Microsoft Security Research & Defense -

Yesterday, the MSRC released Microsoft Security Advisory 979352 alerting customers to limited, sophisticated attacks targeting Internet Explorer 6 customers. Today, samples of that exploit were made publicly available.

Before we get into the details I want to make one thing perfectly clear. The attacks we have seen to date, including the exploit released publicly, only affect customers using Internet Explorer 6. As discussed in the security advisory, while newer versions of Internet Explorer are affected by this vulnerability, mitigations exist that make exploitation much more difficult. We would like to share a little more information about both the vulnerability and the exploits we have seen to help you understand the risk to your organization.

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As you can see, the client configuration currently at risk is Windows XP running IE6. We recommend users of IE6 on Windows XP upgrade to a new version of Internet Explorer and/or enable DEP. Users of other platforms are at reduced risk. We also recommend users of Windows XP upgrade to newer versions of Windows.