Windows XP Flaw 'Extremely Serious'

scottott wrote to mention a Washington Post article with the news that the security hole we mentioned on Wednesday has widened. Computers can now be infected just by visiting infected web sites, or looking at images in the preview panel of older versions of Outlook. From the article: "At first, the vulnerability was exploited by just a few dozen Web sites. Programming code embedded in these pages would install a program that warned victims their machines were infested with spyware, then prompted them to pay $40 to remove the supposed pests. Since then, however, hundreds of sites have begun using the flaw to install a broad range of malicious software. SANS has received several reports of attackers blasting out spam e-mails containing links that lead to malicious sites exploiting the new flaw, Ullrich said."

Comments

Sorry to say it got me

[aka_big_wurm]

I needed a bit of underground info(cd key) and went to the best site for that and with out thinking I used IE -- couldent have shut my browser down fast enough.

Spent the next few hours removing all the junk that installed, I was lucky no root kits were installed.

Firefox?

[freg]

Could someone please elaborate on whether using Firefox browser will help avoid this security hole.