Security experts are urging Australian IT administrators to immediately install Microsoft’s out-of-cycle patch released last week, to prevent the spread of the critical .ani cursor vulnerability.

According to Paul Ducklin head of technology A/NZ at Sophos, the patch will give the biggest protection against this emerging threat followed by a stringent security policy.

“A good patch regime will make this exploit not an exploit, as well as web filtering and email filtering policies.”

Agreeing, Chris Wood A/NZ director at Patchlink said it is critical that IT administrators take the recommended security measures immediately.

"Since the exploit code has been released and there are multiple reports of active exploits in the wild, organisations should take this out-of-cycle patch very seriously.”

“The patch will fix how Microsoft Windows handles ANI files by preventing remote code execution. Because this is an application-based vulnerability it can affect a wide range of operating systems including Vista,” he added.

Patrick Bihammar senior analyst at IDC told SC that Windows’ latest operating system Vista has security features that will help reduce the impact.

“Interesting to note that IE7 protected mode and Vista UAC can help limit the potential damage by preventing the deleting/overwriting of files," he said.