The attack by chinese hackers on many corporate networks Including that of Google, Adobe, Yahoo was carried out based on an unpatched flaw in the Internet explorer the can permit remote execution of code.The attack was targeted on Win XP machines running Internet explorer 6.
Microsoft has issue following advisory regarding the vulnerability: The vulnerability exists as an invalid pointer reference within Internet Explorer. It is possible under certain conditions for the invalid pointer to be accessed after an object is deleted. In a specially-crafted attack, in attempting to access a freed object, Internet Explorer can be caused to allow remote code execution.
The flaw affects Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, and Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 on supported editions of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 are affected.
To exploit, an attacker could host a specially crafted Web site, or take advantage of a compromised website, and then convince a user to view the Web site. In all cases, however, an attacker would have no way to force users to visit these malicious Web sites. Instead, an attacker would have to convince users to visit the Web site, typically by getting them to click a link in an e-mail message or in an Instant Messenger message, that directs users to the attacker’s Web site. It could also be possible to display specially crafted Web content using banner advertisements or other methods to deliver Web content to affected systems. The Microsoft investigation concluded that setting the Internet zone security setting to “high” will protect users from the vulnerability addressed in this advisory.
Microsoft is considering an emergency patch to fix this vulnerability.
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