Proof of Concept code has been released in the wild for download today, 14 December 2006. The PoC is related to an alleged vulnerability affecting Internet Explorer 7. According to the vulnerability reports, IE7 is vulnerable to DLL-load hijackings. According to Aviv Raff, the person that discovered the IE7, Microsoft was informed about the issue.

At the time of this article, an official comment from Microsoft was not available. Additionally, the vulnerability could not be confirmed as authentic. "It has been over a month since my last post regarding the IE7 vulnerability. The feedbacks to this issue were mixed. Some said it's an issue that should be fixed as soon as possible, other said it's a minor issue, a hoax or just "old news". Well, although I did not give the full information in my last post, it is definitely not a hoax, and as far as I know (and Google knows) no one ever informed about this specific issue in Internet Explorer," stated Raff.

Defending the authenticity of the IE7 vulnerability, Raff stated that "sqmapi.dll," "imageres.dll" and "schannel.dll" are DLL file names that can be used in a successful exploit of the IE7 DLL-load hijacking vulnerability. A Proof-of-Concept code for this vulnerability can be accessed via this link.

If you want additional details about the DLL-load hijacking IE7 vulnerability, they are available here.