Microsoft Releases Critical Update Involving IE 7

Today is Microsoft's infamous "patch Tuesday", and one of the issues addressed involves the Internet Explorer 7 web browser. The publicly reported vulnerability exists in the way the Windows shell interprets and handles maliciously crafted URIs, resulting in possible remote code execution. Attackers have been exploiting this weakness, which is only reproducible on PCs running IE 7, via PDF documents among other methods.

This flaw, which does not appear to affect those running the Vista operating system, can be quite harmful if successfully exploited. Windows XP and Server 2003 users are encouraged to apply the update immediately.