Google Hack Code Released, Metasploit Exploit Now Available

By Kelly Jackson Higgins
DarkReading
Jan 16, 2010

Internet Explorer exploit code used in the so-called Aurora attacks out of China against Google and other companies has been posted online -- and now the popular Metasploit hacking tool has released a working exploit of the attack as well.

The malware, which exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer in targeted attacks against Google and other companies'
networks, was used to go after IE6 browsers in the massive attacks, which ultimately resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google and other as-yet unnamed organizations. Adobe and Rackspace are among the companies so far that say they were hit by the attacks that first came to light this week and were allegedly conducted by hackers in China.

With the IE exploit in the wild now, it could be used by other cybercriminals to go after other organizations or users. And while Metasploit's new exploit is meant for researchers and penetration testers to gauge their vulnerability to the attack, Metasploit is still an open-source tool that can be deployed for nefarious purposes as well.

"The public release of the exploit code increases the possibility of widespread attacks using the Internet Explorer vulnerability," George Kurtz, McAfee's CTO, blogged late yesterday. "This attack is especially deadly on older systems that are running XP and Internet Explorer 6," he said.