As I posted a few weeks ago, my box became infected an “extortion ware” spyware program that attempted to get me to purchase SpyAxe by constantly warning me that my computer was infected. The only way I was able to get rid of it was to scrub my box and start over.

Today, Microsoft announced that there is a big ol’ honkin’ security hole in Windows that allows this to happen.

According to the article, it doesn’t matter what browser you use (IE, Firefox, Opera), if you have a Windows machine, you’re vulnerable. It also states that there are hundreds of reported websites that are exploiting this problem and also possible to get attacked by viewing infected WMF files.

As of this writing, Microsoft hasn’t found a solution to the problem.

So… be careful where you go, what you click on, and for the love of all that’s good and pure, update your anti-virus, firewall, and spyware detection programs!