MICROSOFT today released an emergency software patch for its Internet Explorer web browser after a critical flaw in the program put millions of computers at risk of being hijacked.
Microsoft said it was imperative users patch their systems as soon as possible because the flaw in Internet Explorer could be armed to hijack computers for nefarious uses.

"There is no need for people to be tricked into clicking a link or download a file, the nature of the vulnerability means the malicious program loads by stealth," said Adam Biviano, alliance manager of software security vendor Trend Micro.

Once a computer is infected, hackers can take control of it to steal personal data, install Trojans or viruses, or use machines for devious activities such as attacks on other networks, Microsoft said.

Microsoft has released an out-of-band security update, MS08-078, to fix a vulnerability in its Internet Explorer Web browser that's being actively exploited.

"At this time, we are aware only of attacks that attempt to use this vulnerability against Windows Internet Explorer 7," said Christopher Budd, Microsoft security response communications lead, in an e-mailed statement. "Our investigation of these attacks so far has verified that they are not successful against customers who have applied the security update. MS08-078 has a maximum severity rating of Critical for all versions of Internet Explorer."

December 17, 2008 (Computerworld) As it promised yesterday, Microsoft Corp. today issued an emergency patch to plug a critical hole in Internet Explorer (IE) that attackers have been increasingly exploiting from hacked Web sites.

The patch, described in Microsoft's security bulletin MS08-078, fixes a flaw in the data-binding function of all available versions of the popular browser, including IE5.01, IE6, IE7 and IE8 Beta 2.

Microsoft labeled the bug as "critical," the most serious threat ranking in its four-step scoring system. Today's update was the second out-of-cycle patch from Microsoft in the past two months.

WTH are you on about Corona?

Sorry Humpty. I keep forgetting how dark humor is frowned upon here.