Critical out-of-band patch for Internet Explorer now available

If you've been following the fallout from the Google versus China cyber war, you're probably aware that a weakness in Internet Explorer was exploited to hack into over 30 Silicon Valley businesses. It soon became clear that this critical weakness was exploitable in almost every version of Internet Explorer and under all recent versions of Windows. Fortunately only IE6 has actually been exploited by hackers -- if you use IE7 or 8, or Windows Vista or 7, you should be safe. But just to be sure, Microsoft has moved quickly to plug the hole and prevent any future exploits with patch MS10-002.

I can't find a download link, but the security bulletin says if you have automatic updates turned on, your browser should now be updated and safe -- what's surprising is that this is an out-of-band update meaning that it was pushed immediately, rather than waiting for Patch Tuesday, which would've left machines exploitable for another few weeks.

If you haven't got automatic updates turned on, I suggest you head to Windows Update (or access it via your Start Menu) and make sure you're fully patched.

Or install Firefox 3.6.

Tags: google vs china, GoogleVsChina, internet explorer, InternetExplorer, microsoft, patch, security, windows