http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42765000/jpg/_42765871_wowarcraft-blizzard203.jpg

World of Warcraft players are being targeted by hackers exploiting flaws in how Windows handles animated cursors.
The flaw came to light in late March and lets attackers take over vulnerable PCs via booby-trapped websites.

Warcraft players seem to be one of the targets because accounts for the game are potentially worth significant sums of money.

Microsoft has issued a patch for the flaw early to combat the rising number of attacks.

Player power

Security firms tracking how criminal hackers are exploiting the cursor flaw suspect there are many websites hosting the code that can be used to take over vulnerable PCs.

Some of the sites have been specially created but others have been hacked to be unwitting hosts for the infection.

The potential for the flaw to do harm grew significantly with the discovery of a website that automatically generates