Critical Vulnerability in Windows Animated Cursors - Patch Today
Three months ago, in December, 2006, Microsoft was notified about a system vulnerability in the handling of animated cursors, but did nothing about it. Proof of concept code was published demonstrating an exploit vector. This new vulnerability is now being widely exploited to install Trojan malware into fully patched Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003 and Vista systems. All fully patched Windows systems are currently vulnerable.
It is now April 3, 2007, and due to the fact that this unpatched vulnerability is currently being exploited in the wild, Microsoft is going to release an "out-of-cycle" patch for the animated cursor vulnerability, today, April 3, 2007.
If you have automatic Windows Updates turned on you will receive the patch when it is pushed to your geographical/IP location. If you prefer to use manual updates (e.g. dial-up customers), start checking whenever you go online, today. All versions of Windows have a link to Windows Updates, somewhere on the Start Menu and also on every version of Internet Explorer (Tools > Windows Update).
If you are unable to obtain Windows Updates at this time you can temporarily protect your Windows computers by downloading and installing a third party patch from eEye Digital Security. If you do install the official Microsoft patch later, be sure you uninstall the eEye patch.
If you install this update, reboot, then get an error message regarding Uer32.dll being relocated, please read this followup article for advise.
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