Security experts uncovered yet another bug in Internet Explorer this week, one that could let attackers replace the content of any legit site with their own, making it possible to spoof critical pages such as e-bank account access log-in forms or credit card entry forms.
The flaw, posted Thursday by Danish security firm Secunia but discovered Tuesday by a member of the grayhats group, affects Internet Explorer 6.x, including the version included with the supposedly beefed up Windows XP SP2.
According to the grayhat and Secunia analysis, IE suffers from a bug in its DHTML Edit ActiveX control that can be exploited to execute the attacker's chosen script code.
Dubbed "cross-site scripting," the attack tactic could let hackers drop their own content into real Web sites, even including such protective indicators as the SSL padlock used by e-commerce sites to denote a secure transactional page.
This week's bug is far from the first. Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in IE have regularly popped up on security mailing lists and vendor alert sites for more than a year.
Secunia, which tagged the unpatched vulnerability as "moderately critical," recommended that IE users either disable ActiveX or set the security for the browser's Internet zone to "high."
The bug's been confirmed to exist in IE 6.x, including the version bundled with Windows XP SP2. Secunia has also posted a quick online test to determine if a browser's vulnerable.
The flaw, posted Thursday by Danish security firm Secunia but discovered Tuesday by a member of the grayhats group, affects Internet Explorer 6.x, including the version included with the supposedly beefed up Windows XP SP2.
According to the grayhat and Secunia analysis, IE suffers from a bug in its DHTML Edit ActiveX control that can be exploited to execute the attacker's chosen script code.
Dubbed "cross-site scripting," the attack tactic could let hackers drop their own content into real Web sites, even including such protective indicators as the SSL padlock used by e-commerce sites to denote a secure transactional page.
This week's bug is far from the first. Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in IE have regularly popped up on security mailing lists and vendor alert sites for more than a year.
Secunia, which tagged the unpatched vulnerability as "moderately critical," recommended that IE users either disable ActiveX or set the security for the browser's Internet zone to "high."
The bug's been confirmed to exist in IE 6.x, including the version bundled with Windows XP SP2. Secunia has also posted a quick online test to determine if a browser's vulnerable.
