Itis known as a "zero-day" vulnerabilitybecause, effectively, ithas beentheresince the productwas launched - dayzero - and not even its developerhadspotted it.
Hackers infected banner ads run by marketing firms such as Germany's Falk Esolutions, causing users who visited certain Web sites displaying Falk ads to download a Trojan horse that steals credit card numbers by exploiting yet another undetected vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer (a zero-day attack, once again).
While some customers use this to overcome problems they have with enforcing vulnerability and patch management policies it is a cumbersome technology that does nothing to address new threats, zeroday vulnerabilities, or insider attacks.