December 15, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- If you use any of the current versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, be careful.

You could be vulnerable to having your computers hijacked because of a serious security hole in the software that has yet to be fixed.

The flaw lets criminals take over a computer merely by tricking users into visiting Web sites tainted with malicious programming code. Antivirus software maker Trend Micro says as many as 10,000 sites have been compromised since last week to exploit the flaw.

The latest vulnerability is noteworthy because Internet Explorer is the default browser for most of the world's computers.

Many security experts, meanwhile, are urging IE users to use another browser until a patch is released.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)