Microsoft included it in the August 2012 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer

Aug 16, 2012 17:11 GMT  ·  By

Two days ago, Microsoft started the delivery of a new set of security updates for many of its products, aimed at patching over 15 vulnerabilities that were found to affect them.

Among these updates there was also one aimed at the company’s Internet Explorer web browser, which brought along IE 9.0.9 on supported Windows clients.

The new release was made available through Windows Update, and was part of the August 2012 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer, Tyson Storey, program manager, Internet Explorer, notes in a blog post.

The update was meant to address four privately reported vulnerabilities in the web browser, the most severe of which could allow remote code execution if a user entered a specifically crafted web page.

“An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the current user,” Tyson Storey notes.

“Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.”

The security update was rendered Critical for all Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, and Internet Explorer 9 flavors on Windows clients. On Windows Server, the bulletin was rated Moderate.

As it usually happens with this kind of updates, they are delivered automatically to all users who have the Windows Update feature enabled by default. They need to take no further action to install the updates.

However, users without automatic updates enabled should install the new software version as soon as possible. They are also advised to enable the Windows Update feature in Control Panel, to ensure that the latest security patches are installed on their machines.

“We recommend that administrators, enterprise installations, and end users who want to install this security update manually, apply the update immediately using update management software or by checking for updates using the Microsoft Update service,” Storey concluded.

Internet Explorer 9 is available for download from Softpedia as well, via this link.