Google Project Zero has disclosed a potentially serious vulnerability in Microsoft’s Edge and Internet Explorer web browsers before the tech giant could release patches.
The details of the flaw and proof-of-concept (PoC) code were made public last week by Google Project Zero researcher Ivan Fratric after Microsoft failed to meet the 90-day disclosure deadline.
The security hole, tracked as CVE-2017-0037, has been described as a high severity type confusion. The vulnerability can be exploited to cause the web browsers to crash, but arbitrary code execution could also be possible.
This is the second unpatched vulnerability in a Microsoft product disclosed by Google Project Zero this month. Earlier, Mateusz Jurczyk released the details of a medium severity information disclosure flaw tracked as CVE-2017-0038.
In addition, there is an unpatched denial-of-service (DoS) flaw in Windows caused by how SMB traffic is handled.
Microsoft only released patches for Adobe Flash Player this month after postponing its February 2017 updates to March 14 due to an unspecified “last minute issue.” It’s possible that the three vulnerabilities affecting Windows and the browsers were supposed to be fixed by the delayed security updates.
Microsoft claimed last month that the security mechanisms in Windows 10 can block the exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities even before patches are made available. As an example the company provided two flaws exploited in sophisticated attacks against organizations in South Korea and the United States before fixes could be released.
Related: Google Discloses Windows Zero-Day Vulnerability
Related: Microsoft Patches Several Publicly Disclosed Flaws
Related: Google Discloses Windows Flaw That Microsoft Failed to Fix
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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