It’s only been a matter of hours since Microsoft released its ‘finished’ version of Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), yet already Secunia—a Danish security intelligence company—has unveiled the browser’s first worrying bug.

Copenhagen-based Secunia has claimed that IE7 contains a bug (described as a cross-domain information-disclosure vulnerability) that can be utilised by motivated miscreants (or criminals as we like to call them) for the snatching of personal and confidential information from a PC.

Secunia offers that those wishing to abuse said flaw via a malicious website could well steal data that’s entered on a different site where the unlucky user is logged on. For example, a would-be attacker would perhaps attract users to his ‘evil site’, while hoping that one (or more) of them would also be logged on at their online bank at the same time. Of course, if they were, then Mr. Robber would be free to rip the username and password for the open account.

Of course, Secunia’s swift bug revelation flies in the face of Microsoft’s continual assurances that IE7 would arrive as a more secure server than its predecessors. Indeed, reports indicate that Secunia first warned of the bug way back in April via IE6.

After close to two years of public development, and more than five years since the browser’s last major update, Microsoft probably won’t be best pleased to have IE7 labelled as ‘buggy’ before it’s even out of the starting blocks.

Ooops.