Security threats Toolkit

New IE overflow exploit published

Joris Evers CNET News

Published: 21 Mar 2006 10:05 GMT

Microsoft is investigating a newly reported flaw in Internet Explorer 6 that could cause the browser to crash when viewing a malicious Web page, the company said on Monday.

Details of the security weakness in the Web browser were published on a popular security mailing list last week by researcher Michal Zalewski. "This might not come as a surprise, but there appears to be a very interesting and apparently very much exploitable overflow in Microsoft Internet Explorer," he wrote.

The flaw can be exploited by an attacker to crash IE, Secunia said in an advisory published on Monday. The vulnerability has been confirmed on a fully patched PC running IE 6 and Windows XP with Service Pack 2, the security monitoring company said. Secunia deems the issue "not critical."

Microsoft is investigating the issue, a company representative said in an emailed statement. "At this time, we are not aware of any attacks attempting to use the reported vulnerability," the representative wrote.

Once it completes its inquiry, Microsoft said, it may issue a security advisory or provide a patch through its monthly release process.