After Google reported a high threat cyber-attack on its system, originating from somewhere within China, Microsoft has expressed that a fault with their Internet Explorer (IE) browser may have aided hackers. As Google threatened to pull out of China amid concern that the attack came from the Chinese government, McAfee, the internet security firm, expressed that a flaw in “one the vectors” found in IE was used in the attack.
Asked by a number of firms who were attacked, McAfee said that whilst it had been confirmed that an IE flaw aided the attack, speculation over PDF software used by Adobe being the cause, was not substantiated. McAfee’s vice president of research Dmitri Alperovitch said “We have never seen attacks of this sophistication in the commercial space. We have previously only seen them in the government space.”
Meanwhile, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed that a flaw with IE was at fault, with concerned individuals able to rectify the problem by changing security settings to their highest level and using the browser in protected mode. “The company has determined that Internet Explorer was one of the vectors used in targeted and sophisticated attacks against Google and other corporate networks. We need to take all cyber attacks, not just this one, seriously. We have a whole team of people that responds in very real time to any report that it may have something to do with our software, which we don’t know yet.”
