As Neowin reported yesterday, the out-of-band security vulnerability patch will be released on January 21, 2010. The security patch will address a remote code execution hole found in Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8.
The vulnerability was unveiled when Google went public that they were targeted in a sophisticated cyber-attack. The breach, involving Internet Explorer 6, resulted in the theft of intellectual property. Due to the attack, and the background behind it, Google announced it will no longer be providing censored results for its Chinese Google search engine. Currently Google offers censored search results as part of an agreement with the Chinese government.
Microsoft has been busy working on a fix for the issues and has decided an out of band patch is required. Whilst it's a rare decision these days, Microsoft could ill afford to wait three weeks until the next "patch Tuesday" on February 9.
The update affects Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, Server 2003 and Server 2008.
This update does require a restart.
Thanks to Sudo for the news tip!
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