Microsoft Probes Reports of New Holes in Explorer

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Microsoft Probes Reports of New Holes in Explorer

November 28, 2003
 By REUTERS





Filed at 7:17 p.m. ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O) is
investigating a report of seven new security holes in its
Internet Explorer browser discovered by a Chinese
researcher, a company spokesman said on Friday.

The spokesman said Microsoft is not aware of anyone
actively exploiting the holes or of any impact on
customers.

Two holes are critical and could allow an attacker to run a
program that would delete files, crash the machine or take
control of it from a remote location, said Russ Cooper of
TruSecure Corp. who edits the NTBugTraq e-mail list.

Cooper said, however, he was not yet concerned about the
security holes because of the inactivity.

``There just aren't any new attacks being made'' on
Internet Explorer, he said.

The discovery of the holes was not reported directly to
Microsoft but was announced on public mailing lists, a move
the Microsoft spokesman criticized.

Software companies prefer that independent researchers
notify them of potential holes in their products before
they release the news to the public so the companies have
time to develop fixes for them.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-tech-microsoft-holes.html?ex=1071114179&ei=1&en=314ac484228f05ab

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