Software giant Microsoft has issued an out-of-band security update to patch a highly-publicised security hole in its Internet Explorer browser.
The flaw, affecting multiple versions of IE, was recently used in a major cyber attack on Google, in which hackers accessed the Gmail accounts of Chinese civil rights activists. Following the attack, Google threatened to withdraw from the Chinese market, and European governments - including France and Germany - have publicly advised their citizens to avoid using Microsoft's browser.
Widespread media attention has resulted in Microsoft issuing an out-of-band update that "addresses several vulnerabilities," some of which "could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer".
"We’ve released this Cumulative Security Update earlier than originally scheduled based on malicious activities reported on the web," said the company in a statement, prior to admitting that it knew about the security hole "since early September" 2009 and wasn't scheduled to issue a fix until February 2010.
The bad publicity comes in a week in which rival browsers - including Opera, Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox - have all announced new reasons for users to switch.
Microsoft's IE security update (MS10-002) is available via Windows Update for Internet Explorer versions 5.01, 6, 7, and 8.
