Microsoft said today it will issue an out-of-band patch tomorrow for a vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and 7 that is being actively exploited.
“The vulnerability exists due to an invalid pointer reference being used within Internet Explorer. It is possible under certain conditions for the invalid pointer to be accessed after an object is deleted. In a specially-crafted attack, in attempting to access a freed object, Internet Explorer can be caused to allow remote code execution,” Microsoft said in its Security Advisory 981374 earlier this month.
“In a Web-based attack scenario, an attacker could host a Web site that contains a Web page that is used to exploit this vulnerability. In addition, compromised Web sites and Web sites that accept or host user-provided content or advertisements could contain specially crafted content that could exploit this vulnerability,” they said.
The vulnerability is enumerated as CVE-2010-0806
Advisory here.
Tom Kelchner