We got multiple readers telling us in they noticed reports about a new MSIE 0-day abusing VRM.
This 0-day apears to be different from
last week's 0-day abusing daxctle.ocx (BTW: it's still unpatched).
The researchers claim it allows remote code injection (i.e. anything the local user could do).
Since we know of no killbit, your options are limited in mitigating this attack. And with a possible solution far off, looking into alternate browsers isn't the worst way to spend the next half hour.
One of the easaiest ways to make it work might be to use Firefox
with a plugin to allow certain sites (such as windowsupdate.com) to transparently use MSIE to get back the ActiveX functionality without bothering the user over the choice and differences. If you do go that road, also add
noscript, and a toolbar to block funny sites.
See also the diary on
diversity.
There is some posibility to lessen the impact by reducing the rights the user has but it'll only mitigate drive-by shootings at best as the targeted attacker is probably more than happy to get the rights (and access to information) the user has as part of his/her daily tasks.
Thanks to all who sent in a note about this.
--
Swa Frantzen --
Section 66