The latest vulnerability to affect Internet Explorer has forced Microsoft to issue an out of band fix. So far Microsoft says that it only affects IE7, but security vendors have said it affects every version of IE. Microsoft is downplaying the vulnerability, despite moving quickly to get the patch ready, and it issued a statement through its PR firm yesterday, which we found hilarious: "To date, the impact on Microsoft’s Australian customers has been minimal and Microsoft is not advising Internet Explorer users to switch browsers."

We disagree. If you're not already using FireFox, get on it! You'll be doing yourself a favour as it's more secure, more versatile and, in my opinion, is more comfortable to use.

The latest IE vulnerability is said to allow remote code to be executed and PCs to be hijacked. An urgent patch was issued early this morning (Aussie time), so be sure to check your update list for it and patch yourself if you're persisting with IE.

If you don't have automatic updates switched on, and if you haven't got the patch already, Microsoft wants users to set their IE security settings to 'High', and to use 'Protected Mode' in IE 7. Like we said, a better solution would be to install FireFox.