[VulnWatch] Secunia Research: Microsoft Internet Explorer Multiple Vulnerabilities

From: Andreas Sandblad (as@private)
Date: Fri Feb 11 2005 - 07:47:26 PST


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                     Secunia Research 09/02/2005

      - Microsoft Internet Explorer Multiple Vulnerabilities -

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Table of Contents

Affected Software....................................................1
Severity.............................................................2
Description of Vulnerabilities.......................................3
Solution.............................................................4
Time Table...........................................................5
Credits..............................................................6
References...........................................................7
About Secunia........................................................8
Verification.........................................................9

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1) Affected Software

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01, 5.5 and 6

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2) Severity

Rating: Highly critical
Impact: System access, Security Bypass, 
        Exposure of sensitive information
Where:  From remote

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3) Description of Vulnerabilities

Secunia Research has discovered multiple vulnerabilities in 
Microsoft Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious 
people to disclose sensitive information, bypass certain security 
restrictions and compromise a user's system.

1) The vulnerability is caused due to insufficient validation of drag 
and drop events from the "Internet" zone to local resources for valid 
images containing script code. This can be exploited by e.g. a 
malicious website to plant arbitrary file types on a user's system 
via a specially crafted "Content-Disposition" HTTP header with a dot 
appended in the filename.

Example:
"Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=malicious.bat."

This is related to:
SA12321

The vulnerability has been confirmed on a fully patched system 
(without MS05-014) with Internet Explorer 6.0 and 
Microsoft Windows XP SP1/SP2.

2) The vulnerability is caused due to insufficient cross zone 
restrictions. This can be exploited to link to local resources when a 
user clicks a link on e.g a malicious website.

The vulnerability has been confirmed in 
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 running Windows 2000, 
Windows XP SP1 and Windows XP SP2.

3) The vulnerability is caused due to an error in the handling of 
websites inside the "Temporary Internet Files" folder. This can be 
exploited to cause a site to be loaded in context of the 
"Temporary Internet Files" folder when a user clicks a link on e.g. a 
malicious website.

Further exploitation involves gaining knowledge of a user's username 
and retrieving documents found inside the "Temporary Internet Files" 
folder.

The vulnerability has been confirmed in 
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 running Windows 2000, 
Windows XP SP1 and Windows XP SP2.

4) A parsing error in the "codebase" attribut of the "object" tag. 
This can be exploited to execute local files with any file extension 
from the "Local Computer Zone" by appending "?.exe".

The vulnerability has been confirmed in 
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 running Windows 2000 and 
Windows XP SP1.

NOTE: A combination of the vulnerabilities 2, 3 and 4 can be exploited 
to execute arbitrary code on Microsoft Internet Explorer running 
Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP1, in combination with a 
third-party software which stores malicious files in a predictable 
location.

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4) Solution

Microsoft has released patches (see MS05-014 for details).

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5) Time Table

25/09/2004 - Vulnerabilities discovered.
04/10/2004 - Vendor notified.
11/10/2004 - Vendor confirms the vulnerabilities.
12/10/2004 - Additional vulnerability discovered.
13/10/2004 - Vendor notified.
17/10/2004 - Vendor confirms the vulnerability.
08/02/2005 - Public disclosure.

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6) Credits

Discovered by Andreas Sandblad, Secunia Research.

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7) References

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned 
candidate number CAN-2005-0053 for the vulnerability.

MS05-014 (KB867282):
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms05-014.mspx

US-CERT VU#698835:
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/698835

SA12321:
http://secunia.com/advisories/12321/

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8) About Secunia

Secunia collects, validates, assesses, and writes advisories regarding
all the latest software vulnerabilities disclosed to the public. These
advisories are gathered in a publicly available database at the
Secunia web site:

http://secunia.com/

Secunia offers services to our customers enabling them to receive all
relevant vulnerability information to their specific system
configuration.

Secunia offers a FREE mailing list called Secunia Security Advisories:

http://secunia.com/secunia_security_advisories/

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9) Verification

Please verify this advisory by visiting the Secunia web site:
http://secunia.com/secunia_research/2004-8/advisory/

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