Explorer Patched Early

Explorer patched early   Correspondents Los Angeles SEPTEMBER 27, 2006

FROM AUSTRALIAN IT

MICROSOFT has released a security patch to fix a "critical" hole in its Internet Explorer web browser which it said could allow an attacker to take control of a user's computer.

The patch was released two weeks ahead of a regularly scheduled monthly security update after Microsoft said it became aware of a "public attack utilszing the vulnerability".

The impact on customers was "limited", Microsoft said

Microsoft typically issues security patches at the beginning of the month.

The flaw rated at critical - the highest level - existed in the coding for Vector Markup Language, or VML.

The company defines a flaw as "critical" when the vulnerability could allow a damaging internet worm to replicate without the user doing anything to the machine.

But I don't need to worry about it, as Firefox on Linux was designed and built with security in mind.