-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Has anyone been able to verify this? http://www.secunia.com/advisories/8955/ Internet Explorer Exposes Sensitive Information Release Date: 2003-06-06 Critical: Moderately critical Impact: Exposure of sensitive information Where: From remote Software: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Description: A vulnerability has been identified in Internet Explorer, which exposes sensitive information to "msn.com" and "alexa.com". While this is a known "feature" when the "Show Related Links" option is activated in Internet Explorer, there is a bug, so that Internet Explorer will keep transmitting the information to "msn.com" and "alexa.com" after "Show Related Links" has been de-activated. This occurs whenever "Ctrl+R" is used to reload a page. To make matters worse, it has been confirmed that this behaviour also affects SSL enabled pages. One thing is that Microsoft has chosen to make a "feature", which reveals this information to "msn.com" and "alexa.com", but the fact that information, which was supposed to be protected by SSL and sent only to one site, is sent in plain text to a third party ("msn.com" and "alexa.com") is of great concern. The data transmitted to "msn.com" and "alexa.com" is the complete URL. In some cases this could contain sensitive information such as username, password, session id, search string, "secret paths", and more. The vulnerability has been confirmed for Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 2000 and Windows XP with all Service Packs and hotfixes. It is Microsoft that controls who else than "msn.com" should receive this information. Microsoft could at any time choose to send this information to another party than "alexa.com". Solution: We recommend that you filter traffic at your perimeter so that no data may be sent to "msn.com" and "alexa.com". Make sure that you don't use the "Show Related Links" feature or that you close your browser after you have used it. For other alternative solutions see "Other References". Reported by / credits: Mike Shepherd Changelog: 2003-06-09 Minor correction. Added link to alternative solutions. Other References: http://www.imilly.com/alexa.htm#subvert Stewart Smith stewartat_private Programmer / UNIX Sys Admin Gamma Solutions Pty Ltd Monash Corporate Centre, Unit 11, 20 Duerdin Street, Clayton, Victoria 3168 Phone: +61 3 9562 7755 Fax: +61 3 9562 7766 Mobile: +61 4 3884 4332 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (Darwin) iD8DBQE+7mZZFtJC9tN9SokRAo1zAJ93g0roDJlfeZXSI5CQXY99X5t+ZgCgl9Wq kK3vp6lnViXndwoYPkXrj0E= =3zvI -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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