Microsoft Warns of Unpatched IE Browser Zero-Day That’s Under Active Attacks

Internet Explorer is dead, but not the mess it left behind.

Microsoft earlier today issued an emergency security advisory warning millions of Windows users of a new zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) browser that attackers are actively exploiting in the wild — and there is no patch yet available for it.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-0674 and rated moderated, is a remote code execution issue that exists in the way the scripting engine handles objects in memory of Internet Explorer and triggers through JScript.dll library.

A remote attacker can execute arbitrary code on targeted computers and take full control over them just by convincing victims into opening a maliciously crafted web page on the vulnerable Microsoft browser.

“The vulnerability could corrupt memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user,” the advisory says.

“If the current user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could take control of an affected system. An…