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Via ernunnos

Microsoft Announces New Vulnerability Affecting Cursors and Icons

A new vulnerability affecting animated cursor and icons in Windows that has been announced. No patch exists for the vulnerability and exploit code has been released and there are reports of some malware exploiting this problem. Furthermore, Microsoft has acknowledged the issue raising the potential for an increase in exploitation.

According to McAfee, IE version 6 and version 7 running on fully patched versions of Windows XP SP2 are vulnerable. Windows version 2000 SP4 and Server 2003 (non & SP1) are also reportedly vulnerable. Vista is also reported to be vulnerable but only witnessed as a denial-of-service at this point.

Computers can be infected by simply visiting a website containing a malicious .ANI file or HTML email message with one placed on it. In the past, malicious websites have used this type of vulnerability to silently install malware onto an unsuspecting visitor. These are also known as "drive-by" installs.

Man, I'm glad I'm on a Mac. With Apple's move to an Intel platform, there's no reason to stay with Windows any more. Many Windows apps are native to Macs already. But if not, now you can run most of them at near-native speeds using Boot Camp or Parallels.

If you must use Windows, at least switch to Firefox and Thunderbird.