> A few of my co-workers and I were just discussing the new error reporting > functions of Internet Explorer, and we came up with a nasty idea for a virus > utilizing that function as a method of causing a DoS. The idea is to write > a virus that propagates through email (nothing new here) and exploits > Outlook and Outlook Express to achieve that propagation. This virus would > essentially cause the autopreview pane of Outlook to open viewing some type > of HTML/ASP, etc in a way that would cause IE to crash when attempting to > sort it. At that point, with the more recent releases of IE, there would be > an automatic initiation of debug data sent to Microsoft, through using DNS > to resolve. > > Obvious effects would be a likely DoS on business networks and on > Microsoft's debug servers. Other effects could include difficulty in > reaching and downloading patches for the vulnerabilities in the software (if > Microsoft patch servers are utilizing the same WAN link as the debug > servers), as well as possible effects upon DNS servers, especially at > Microsoft. In addition, as has already been talked about, an enormous > amount of private information possibly stored on the debugs would be > forwarded as well. I would imagine that this type of virus could also > effect other kinds of "bugzilla" services. > > Just a thought...
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Oct 24 2001 - 08:34:37 PDT