Microsoft has reissued a critical security update for its Internet Explorer browser. The reissued patch is important because it fully resolves a security bug Microsoft introduced with the original update Aug. 8
Microsoft has reissued a critical security update for its Internet Explorer browser.
The reissued patch is important because it fully resolves a security bug Microsoft introduced with the original update Aug. 8.
Microsoft acknowledged there were problems with its update soon after it was issued. Web sites using HTTP 1.1 compression to speed up the downloading of images could cause the browser to fail, and users of Web-based applications such as PeopleSoft, Siebel, and Sage CRM had problems with the software.
Users of Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 on Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 and Windows XP Service Pack 1 are affected, but not users of the latest Service Pack 2 version of Windows XP, Microsoft says.
Recently, Microsoft released a hot-fix download that addressed these problems but also took the unusual step of announcing it would re-release the entire update (called MS06-042). This would ensure that subscribers to Microsoft’s automatic update services would receive the fixed patch automatically.
That update was slated to have been released early last week, but it was delayed because of an “issue discovered in final testing,” Microsoft says.
Just as Microsoft announced this delay, security researchers at eEye Digital Security disclosed the security issue, saying that Microsoft’s Aug. 8 update had created a new Internet Explorer bug that attackers could exploit to run unauthorized software on a PC.
Though no attacks exploiting this bug have been reported, eEye believes that the issue is critical. “The bad guys basically know about this and know that it’s an exploitable scenario,” eEye’s chief hacking officer Marc Maiffret said Tuesday.
Microsoft has published a security advisory on this issue.
It’s not uncommon for Microsoft to introduce bugs in its security updates, but it is unusual for the company to give guidance on when it plans to fix them, says Russ Cooper, senior information security analyst for Cybertrust. It also is unusual for security firms such as eEye to investigate these bugs for security problems and disclose their existence before Microsoft has patched the problem, he adds.
