Around mid-afternoon on the East Coast, Microsoft issued MS10-002, an out-of-cycle patch that addressed the recently disclosed Internet Explorer vulnerability linked to the attacks on Google. In addition, there were seven other fixes rolled into the update.

The update is a cumulative patch, and it corrects eight specific vulnerabilities in the Internet Explorer browser. Six of these fixes involve memory corruption flaws with the potential of allowing remote code execution.

According to the Microsoft Security
Research & Defense team, this update also address the DEP bypass vulnerability made public earlier this week, which exists in all current versions of Internet Explorer.

Given the nature of the patched flaws, as well as the in-the-wild code used to exploit some of them, Lumension’s Don Leatham recommended that businesses “immediately review their environments for computers with Internet Explorer 6 running on Windows XP.”

“These machines should be priorities in deployment plans for this critical security update,” he added. “Additionally, given that this vulnerability addresses six separate remote code execution vulnerabilities, it is imperative that organizations track the deployment of this patch and confirm its successful installation on all Windows computers in their organization.”

Again, the big news with this patch is the fact it fixes a ZeroDay hole that was used in the attack on Google. Sheldon Malm, senior director of security strategy at Rapid7, mentioned this briefly in an email to The Tech Herald.

“Microsoft should be applauded for responding so quickly, and the efforts of the research community cannot be underestimated here. Reported attacks generate a lot of buzz but vendors seem to respond with more urgency when working exploits are publicly available. There is little choice but to be transparent when Metasploit releases coverage,” said Malm.

“This one has raised the responsible disclosure debate again, which is a bit of a red herring. If not for public exploit development, this one could very well have sat unprotected for another 3 weeks. Metasploit and the research community have shown once again that they are a strong customer advocate, urging vendors to address issues in line with their true severity.”

Now there's a fix for the ZeroDay exploit, all that needs to happen is for it to be applied. The problem is that SMBs and consumers alike are still slow to patch, which could place them at risk.

Trend Micro said in an advisory that, despite the news of a pending patch, the ZeroDay vulnerability continued to be exploited online -- with analysis showing that the newest wave of attacks was using the same scripts as those applied during the attacks on Google.