A serious security flaw has been found in Ask.com's toolbar for Internet Explorer and can enable an attacker to take over a person's computer, according to Secunia.com.
The vulnerability is attributed to a boundary error with the toolbar's Active X control, which can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow, according to the site. Version 4.0.2 of Ask.com's toolbar is confirmed to contain the error, and others may too be affected.
Ask.com is yet to release a statement acknowledging the problem.
Hi Folks, we at Ask had released a statement on this acknowledging the issue on Tuesday PM; here is the updated statement: "Ask.com takes security very seriously. We were notified of a buffer overflow issue in the Ask.com IE toolbar, and worked aggressively to resolve it. On Wednesday, we released the fix, and all Ask.com toolbar users were automatically notified of the update. In addition, we posted information online via our IE toolbar FAQ site that informed Ask.com toolbar users of the issue and the resolution. Again, no exploits were known to have occurred." - Nicholas Graham, Ask.com spokesperson