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Vulnerability Note VU#440275

Microsoft Internet Explorer contains buffer overflow in handling of gopher replies

Overview

There is a buffer overflow in Internet Explorer when IE receives information from a gopher service.

I. Description

Gopher is a protocol that presents documents and services in a hierarchal representation, and is similar in some ways to HTTP. Internet Explorer reportedly contains a buffer overflow in the code that processes responses from gopher servers. Although gopher servers are no longer widely supported, Internet Explorer supports gopher. If an intruder can entice or coerce a victim into clicking on a link to a gopher server, and the intruder can control the response from the gopher server (perhaps by constructing his own malicious gopher server), the intruder may be able to use the buffer overflow to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the victim.

This issue was discovered by Jouko Pynnonen of Online Solutions Ltd . Additional information can be found at http://www.solutions.fi/index.cgi/news_2002_06_04?lang=eng and http://microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-027.asp.

II. Impact

Intruders may be able to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the victim.

III. Solution

Please see http://microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-027.asp.

Remove the gopher URL handler from IE, and block requests to gopher servers (TCP/70) and your network perimeter.

Systems Affected

VendorStatusDate NotifiedDate Updated
Microsoft CorporationVulnerable12-Jun-2002

References

http://www.solutions.fi/index.cgi/news_2002_06_04?lang=eng
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1436.txt
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/4930
http://microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-027.asp

Credit

Our thanks to Oy Online SOlutions LTD, upon whose advisory this document is based, and who discovered the vulnerability.

This document was written by Shawn V. Hernan & Ian A. Finlay.

Other Information

Date Public:2002-06-04
Date First Published:2002-06-12
Date Last Updated:2002-06-12
CERT Advisory: 
CVE-ID(s): 
NVD-ID(s): 
US-CERT Technical Alerts: 
Severity Metric:26.72
Document Revision:14

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Copyright 2002 Carnegie Mellon University
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