Microsoft Gives Instructions On How To Deal With IE Vulnerability

Nope, sorry. There’s still no patch out to get rid of the most recent IE vulnerability, but Microsoft does not want it to look like they are not doing anything about the situation. We know that things have gotten real bad – even governments have been telling their citizens to get rid of Internet Explorer and use another browser (which makes so much sense, really!).

But, what if you absolutely have to use Internet Explorer for one reason or another?

Microsoft has released instructions on how to deal with the latest IE vulnerability, which can allow remote code execution if taken advantage of. As initially mentioned when the news came out, the IE vulnerability is present in all versions of the browser, although Microsoft says that the actual attacks have been very targeted and limited and that only IE version 9, 10, and 11  have been affected. So far.

Anyhow, the main thing that Microsoft says to do about the IE vulnerability is to go on Enhanced Protection Mode, which does what it says on the tin: add more security measures so that you can be protected from malware attacks. This mode was a new feature in IE 10.

CNET outlines the steps that you have to take to turn on Enhanced Protection Mode:

1. To enable EPM in IE 10 or 11, click the Tools menu and then click Internet options.
2. In the Internet Options window, click the Advanced tab.
3. Scroll down the list of options until you see the Security section.
4. Look for the option to Enable Enhanced Protected Mode and click its checkbox to turn it on.
5. If you’re running IE 11 in a 64-bit version of Windows, you also need to click the checkbox to Enable 64-bit processes for Enhanced Protected Mode.
6. Restart IE to force the new setting to take effect.

If you’re using IE 10 and 11, you might be all right, but what if you’re using versions which do not have this mode? You’ll have to do a little bit of tweaking and unregister an associated IE DLL file: VGX.DLL. Here’s a screenshot of the instructions.

And here’s where you can find the text.

It’s so much easier to use Chrome, yes?

[Image via scgnews]