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Windows Vulnerability in Animated Cursor Handling
MoreDruid writes "Secunia reports a vulnerability in Windows Animated Cursor Handling. According to the linked article, the rating is "extremely critical". Microsoft has put up their own advisory on the subject, confirming this is a vulnerability that affects Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. The exploit has already been used in the wild. From the Secunia page: The vulnerability is caused due to an unspecified error in the handling of animated cursors and can e.g. be exploited by tricking a user into visiting a malicious website using Internet Explorer or opening a malicious e-mail message. Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code."
If you think you're not vulnerable because you won't be downloading an animated cursor, or you're not vulnerable because you have AV software, read this:
...which has a similar infection vector (by merely visiting a web page you get infected), and went undetected for 54 days.
http://www.secureworks.com/research/threats/gozi/
This latest silent exploit, which can be used by merely visiting a web page, will be used for other similar attacks.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
For those people saying "turn off animated cursors" and such, I don't think that's a solution. IE allows a webpage (or email if you're using the IE rendering engine in Outlook) to replace your cursor using some IE-specific CSS code. It's as easy as changing the background for a webpage. Examples:
.ANI file which exploits the hole in IE.
body {cursor: url('cursor.ani');}
<BODY style="CURSOR: url('cursor.ani')">
<BODY style="CURSOR: url('http://www.example.com/cursor.ani')">
You can do it for the <BODY> element, or for other elements like <A>s. It then loads the specified
I am almost positive there is no way to disable this in IE.