Escalating attacks prompted emergency IE update, says Microsoft
Microsoft said that it patched the critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) earlier this week because the number of attacks jumped after news broke that the exploit had gone public.
Microsoft's explanation fit the expectations of several security researchers, who earlier this month predicted that the company would release an "out-of-band" update if attacks climbed, saying that that was the determining factor in Microsoft's decision-making process.
Holly Stewart, a senior program manager with the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC), acknowledged that attacks exploiting the "iepeers.dll" escalated March 12, two days after Israeli researcher Moshe Ben Abu used a clue in a McAfee blog to build a working attack for the popular Metasploit open-source penetration testing kit.
