Microsoft stated that it will issue a software fix to block Chinese hackers at 5.00am Friday, Australian time after “working round the clock” to fix the problem.

The software monster that has been embarrassed by hackers using the defect in Internet Explorer to hack some of the world’s largest companies undetected since mid-December, said that the update will be the standard February cumulative update, with the inclusion of the security flaw fix. Microsoft said the release would be issued as a “critical” package.

Microsoft continued to suggest people to stop using Internet Explorer 6 or 7 immediately and upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 – which has some level of protection against the hackers (though not complete protection). For the protection to be effective, you must also install the latest patches to Windows such as XP SP 3, or Windows Vista SP1 (both of which have data execution prevention enabled by default.)

Microsoft continued to affirm that it had only seen live attacks targeted at Internet Explorer 6 users, albeit the attackers could exploit machines running IE7 or IE8.