CVE-2010-0249

CVE-2010-0249 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.8) vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer. CISA added it to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on May 20, 2026, which means exploitation in the wild has been confirmed; US federal agencies had to remediate it by June 3, 2026. CISA does not currently list it as used in ransomware campaigns. Microsoft has 390 vulnerabilities in the KEV catalog, 117 of them linked to ransomware.

Use-after-free vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 6 SP1, 7, and 8 on Windows 2000 SP4; Windows XP SP2 and SP3; Windows Server 2003 SP2; Windows Vista Gold, SP1, and SP2; Windows Server 2008 Gold, SP2, and R2; and Windows 7 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by accessing a pointer associated with a deleted object, related to incorrectly initialized memory and improper handling of objects in memory, as exploited in the wild in December 2009 and January 2010 during Operation Aurora, aka "HTML Object Memory Corruption Vulnerability."

CVSS vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

• http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2010/01/14/security-advisory-979352.aspx
• http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10435232-245.html
• http://osvdb.org/61697
• http://securitytracker.com/id?1023462
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979352
• http://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/11167
• http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/492515
• http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/979352.mspx