Microsoft said on Friday it is testing a patch to solve a latest hole in IE 6 and IE 7 following the launch of exploits code on the Internet.

With the statement it looks progressively more likely that the company will be issuing a patch for the hole before the next Patch Tuesday in about 4 weeks, if the testing of the patch goes fast.

Microsoft informed about the hole, which it said was being targeted in attacks and could permit an attacker to take control of a PC, in a suggested on Tuesday. The next day, Israeli researcher Moshe Ben Abu launched exploit code for the exposure after using clues in a McAfee blog post to find existing exploit code and indicative the weakness from there.

"This is a serious and time-consuming step of the procedure as the update should be tested against all affected versions of IE on all supported versions of Windows. Also, every supported language version requires being tested and testing against number of 3rd party applications," he wrote. "We never rule out the option of an out-of-band update. When the update is ready for broad distribution, we will make that decision based on customer requirements."