As I have previously mentioned there has been a lot of press lately where some hackers took advantage of some holes in IE and Adobe Reader to hack Google’s systems in China. As a result Microsoft have burnt the midnight oil and rushed out an Out of Cycle patch for Internet Explorer to resolve this issues even thought this issues seems to be fairly low spread.

Even so if you are still running Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows XP (yes there  are some corporations that do) it is STRONGLY recommended that you install this patch ASAP. Needless to say if you are still running IE6 on Windows XP then you also need to look at updated to IE7 or IE8. Besides the more compliant HTML rendering engine that the newer browsers offer they are also much more secure. If you happen to be running Vista (yeah for you!) then the risk is about 256 times less likely to affect you due to the extra protection the OS offers such as Protected Mode and Address Space Layout Randomisation (ASLR). Windows 7 users are even more secure as on top of Protected Mode and ASLR as Internet Explorer also has Data Execution Protection enabled by default.

So while your making yourself more secure installing this patch be sure to also check out my other article showing how to turn off JavaScript for Adobe Reader one of the other reported attack vectors for the Google Hack.

For more information about the http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-002.mspx

Update: This security issues was orignal posted as KB979352