Google Goes Public With 'High Severity' Bug in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer

By Ketan Pratap | Updated: 1 March 2017 21:12 IST

Highlights

The vulnerability wasn't fixed by Microsoft in the deadline offered
Google follows a 90 days policy for vulnerabilities before making public
A member of Google's Project Zero cyber-security team discovered bug

Google has disclosed a second unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft's products in less than a month. The company this time went public with a 'high severity' bug in Microsoft's Edge and Internet Explorer. The company previously revealed a bug in Microsoft's Windows Graphics Device Interface component. The new vulnerability was reported by a Google Project Zero research team member, and if not fixed, it reportedly lets attackers execute malicious code in some instances.

For those unaware, Google's Project Zero is a cyber-security team that comprise researchers who focus on hunting down widely-affecting zero-day vulnerabilities. The National Vulnerability Database now has an entry for the bug, and it describes it as, "Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 and Microsoft Edge have a type confusion issue which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via vectors involving a crafted Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) token sequence and crafted JavaScript code that operates on a TH element."

Also seeGoogle Discloses Windows 10 Bug Under 'Active Attack'; Microsoft Working on Fix

The new bug in Microsoft's Edge and Internet Explorer was discovered by researcher Ivan Fratric from Google Project Zero team, and is tracked by the CVE-2017-0037 identifier in Google's bug report. Arstechnica points out that researchers in Project Zero follow policy to disclose a vulnerability details 90 days after they report the issue privately to the company. The bug report notes, "This bug is subject to a 90 day disclosure deadline. If 90 days elapse without a broadly available patch, then the bug report will automatically become visible to the public."

Arstechnica got an issued statement from a Microsoft spokesman who said, "We believe in coordinated vulnerability disclosure, and we've had an ongoing conversation with Google about extending their deadline since the disclosure could potentially put customers at risk. Microsoft has a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues and proactively update impacted devices as soon as possible." Notably, Microsoft cancelled February's Patch Tuesday security updates citing a last minute issue.

Also seeMicrosoft Issues Windows 10 Patch for Security Flaw That Google Revealed

As we mentioned, this is the second major Microsoft vulnerability that Google's Project Zero has disclosed in less than a month, with the previous a Windows Graphics Device Interface (GDI) flaw that could potentially exposed sensitive data stored in memory.

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