According to Matan Gillon, Microsoft has yet another loophole to plug up. This time it's with users who choose Internet Explorer with Google Desktop.

"Google Desktop users who use IE are currently completely exposed. An experienced attacker can covertly harvest their hard drives for sensitive information such as passwords and credit card numbers. Since Google also indexes e-mails which can be read in the Web interface itself, it's also possible to access them using this attack," stated Matan Gillon, an Israeli internet hacker who discovered a hole in Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE).

A phishing attack or someone who uses fraud by sending you an e-mail asking you to visit their site, can occur from malicious Web sites. They typically tend to scan the users' hard drives and access sensitive information contained in them.

The downpart is that "thousands of Web sites can be exploited, and there isn't a simple solution against this attack, at least until IE is fixed," Matan added. Sonya Boralv, a Google spokesperson said, "we just learned of this issue and are looking into it…" Microsoft is also said to be gaining knowledge of the flaw. In a statement, they said that "this issue could potentially allow an attacker to access content in a separate Web site, if that Web site is in a specific configuration."

So beware if you are one of those users using this potentially dangerous combination of IE and Google Desktop.


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