Microsoft has issued a warning to the 900 million users of it’s Internet Explorer web browser admitting that they are at serious risk of having their PCs hacked and their private information stolen by attackers.
Microsoft has also confirmed that they haven’t developed a permanant patch for the exploit yet, however users are advised to apply a temporary fix that will prevent hackers from being able to exploit the vunerability and install malcious software (aka malware) which can infect a users PC simply by visiting a rouge of infected website.
According to Microsoft’s Angela Gunn “an attacker could construct an HTML link designed to trigger a malicious script and somehow convince the targeted user to click it. When the user clicked that link, the malicious script would run on the user’s computer for the rest of the current Internet Explorer session”.
She went on to say that “such a script might collect user information (eg., email), spoof content displayed in the browser, or otherwise interfere with the user’s experience”.
Althought Mozilla Firefox and Google Crome have made inroads into the PC browser market, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still remains the most widely used browser with over 50% marketshare.
For more information, visit the Official Microsoft blog post regarding this issue.