Windows mouse house under attack from animated cursor flaw

By Stan Beer
Sunday, 01 April 2007 06:23

Your IT - Home IT

Microsoft has sounded the alarm about a new zero day security flaw which exploits a vulnerability in the way Windows handles animated cursor (.ani) files.

The flaw, which would be classed as critical, would hand over control of computer to a malicious hacker if the user visits a bad web site or opens a specially crafted email.

Animated cursors are a feature that allows an animation loop instead of single image to appear where the mouse cursor is positioned on the screen. The Animated Cursors feature is designated by the .ani suffix.

While all versions of Windows could be affected, including Vista, earlier versions including Windows XP Service Pack 2 are probably more vulnerable because of their ubiquity in the user community and the fact that they offer two avenues of attack - websites and email.

Vista blocks off the website route because Internet Explorer 7 runs in protected mode. However, if a user opens a crafted HTML email in Vista the system could be infected and taken over by a hacker, although no email exploits have yet been discovered.

Reports say that users running the Fire Fox browser from Mozilla have not yet been targeted.

According to Microsoft, the newly discovered vulnerability will require an update patch. It is likely to be issued during this month's patching cycle.