With software giant Microsoft having issued a Monday warning about a zero-day flaw affecting the Internet Explorer (IE), a German government agency - the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) - is now warning web users about the security breach in the browser, and urging them to stop using IE.

With PCMag's Security Watch blog pointing out that computers can be infected merely by visiting a website which contains malicious code, the agency is recommending the web users to use some other browser till Microsoft releases a security update to fix the zero-day vulnerability.

Even though Microsoft has promised to release a fix for the problem "in the next few days," the Federal Office for Information Security has said in its press release that IE's "weak point is already being used for targeted attacks."

The agency further elaborated that the code behind the attacks exploiting the zero-day flaw in IE is freely available online, and there are chances of it spreading quite rapidly.

Meanwhile, noting that the zero-day flaw affects IE versions 6 through 9, as well as computers running Windows XP and Windows Vista, Microsoft said in a recent blog post that there have been only "a few attempts to exploit the issue," which is impacting "an extremely limited number" of users; and added that the company will release a security update soon "to help ensure Internet Explorer customers are protected and able to safely browse online."