Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, the latest development milestone of IE, is safe from vulnerabilities impacting its precursors, including Internet Explorer 5.01, 6 SP1 and 7. On October 14, Microsoft patched no less than six vulnerabilities affecting Internet Explorer, five of which were privately reported to the company, while details for the remaining one had previously been made available in the wild. The IE Cumulative Security Update for October 2008 has been labeled Critical, namely the maximum severity rating for Microsoft security vulnerabilities.

“The IE Cumulative Security Update for October 2008 is now available via Windows Update. Alternatively, you can receive this and all other Microsoft updates via the new Microsoft Update. I encourage you to upgrade to Microsoft Update if you haven’t already to ensure that you receive the latest updates for all Microsoft products. This update addresses six vulnerabilities,” revealed Terry McCoy, Program Manager, Internet Explorer Security.

IE users that are running Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 (the gold version is expected this November), independent of platform, are in no way exposed to attacks targeting vulnerabilities patched with the IE Cumulative Security Update for October 2008. However, for the rest of IE versions, the security bulletin will bulletproof the browsers against exploits for the six vulnerabilities including flaws related to: HTML Objects Memory Corruption; Uninitialized Memory Corruption; Cross-Domain Information Disclosure; Event Handling Cross-Domain; HTML Element Cross-Domain; and Window Location Property Cross-Domain.

“This security update is rated Critical for all supported versions of Internet Explorer 6 and earlier. The security update is rated Important on Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP and Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista. Beta versions of Internet Explorer are not vulnerable. IE security updates are cumulative and contain all previously released updates for each version of Internet Explorer,” McCoy added.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2 is available for download here.