Details of the security weakness in the Web browser were published on a popular security mailing list last week by researcher Michal Zalewski. "This might not come as a surprise, but there appears to be a very interesting and apparently very much exploitable overflow in Microsoft Internet Explorer," he wrote.
The flaw can be exploited by an attacker to crash IE, Secunia said in an advisory published on Monday. The vulnerability has been confirmed on a fully patched PC running IE 6 and Windows XP with Service Pack 2, the security monitoring company said. Secunia deems the issue "not critical."
Microsoft is investigating the issue, a company representative said in an e-mailed statement. "At this time, we are not aware of any attacks attempting to use the reported vulnerability," the representative wrote.
Once it completes its inquiry, Microsoft said, it may issue a security advisory or provide a patch through its monthly release process.
