Trojan horse rides on unpatched IE flaw

by admin December 1, 2005 at 3:38 am

Attackers are taking advantage of an unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer to target users of the ubiquitous Web browser, Microsoft warned late Tuesday.

Malicious software that exploits the security flaw to download a Trojan horse to vulnerable computers has been found on the Internet, according to Microsoft. Detection and removal capabilities for the “TrojanDownloader:Win32/Delf.DH” have been added to Microsoft’s recently launched online security-scanning tool.

“Customers can visit Windows Live Safety Center and are encouraged to use the Complete Scan option to check for and remove this malicious software and future variants,” Microsoft said in its updated security advisory on the issue.

The security bug, exploited by the Trojan downloader, was originally reported in May. The bug was thought to only allow for a denial-of-service attack, which would cause IE to close. However, experts last week raised an alarm on the issue because it was discovered that it could be used to remotely run code on a vulnerable computer.

Read more: ZDNet News