Symantec releases advice on IE security flaw

Norton has released its latest advice to help counter the security flaw in Internet Explorer, with online advice and links to patches here.
A zero day attack is one that exploits a previously unknown flaw in a piece of software, in this case the oldest version of Internet Explorer, version 6.0.

Symantec say the Hydraq “attempts to install a trojan on a specific computer that steals information from that machine.

“The trojan attempts to make contact with command and control servers in order to receive instructions and to upload any information that it may have collected.”

Once it has this connection it can “Create, modify, and delete registry subkeys.” The registry is the database on which your computer stores windows operating systems,” said Symantec in a blog from the Security Response Group, called The Trojan.Hydra Incident.

According to the blog the Hydraq can also “read, write, execute, copy, change attributes of, and delete files,” as well as “gather information about the compromised machines,” to enable further attacks.

Despite the headlines Symantec said in a separate statement that “the use of browsers other than Internet Explorer by an increasingly large number of people may have helped limit the “attack surface” by reducing the number of computers vulnerable to the Internet Explorer vulnerability used in this attack.”

In December 2009 between 10 and 11 per cent of all machines were still running IE 6, this includes many British Government computers.

Kevin Hogan, Symantec’s Senior Security Response Manager, told PC Pro magazine that while the Google attack had passed, future attacks would continue.

Google Hack

The story broke two weeks ago now with Google’s announcement that they had discovered “ a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.”

The attacks had been targeted to hack the vulnerability in IE when downloading a malicious link. It has now emerged that the attack was even more sophisticated. Google employee accounts were specifically targeted, their friends’ accounts were then hacked, and then used to send malicious links from there to the employee.
Symantec, who produce the Norton range of security solutions, recommend Norton 360 or Internet Security 2010 packages to deal with the vulnerability.

Image Credit: Anonymous Account