Microsoft have disclosed a critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer (CVE-2019-1367) and have released an emergency patch for it.
A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the way that the scripting engine handles objects in memory in Internet Explorer. The vulnerability could corrupt memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. If the current user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could take control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.
In a web-based attack scenario, an attacker could host a specially crafted website that is designed to exploit the vulnerability through Internet Explorer and then convince a user to view the website, for example, by sending an email.
A security update which addresses the vulnerability by modifying how the scripting engine handles objects in memory has been released and can be found here.
FIT managed service clients will be contacted regarding this vulnerability regarding next steps.