Symantec patched the flaw in Norton Internet Security

Symantec is warning users of the possibility that an ActiveX control in Norton Internet Security could allow hackers to exploit the system remotely.

Although Symantec rated the vulnerability as "average", the vulnerability of remote exploits could be considered "serious" as assessed by many other security vendors. US CERT said the flaw could allow an attacker to paralyze a user's browser.

According to Symantec, the ActiveX driver used by Norton Personal Firewall 2004 and Norton Internet Security 2004 contains a buffer overflow vulnerability, and the US CERT itself informed the bug. Currently, Symantec has provided the patch via the LiveUpdte function.

To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker will entice users to view a malicious HTML code attached to the e-mail or via a link to a malicious website.

Norton Internet Security is a product for Windows system, including antivirus, firewall, intrusion detection, private information protection, spam removal and content filtering. The ActiveX control of this software is a set of rules for how applications share information with each other.