Vulnerability Note VU#679556

Microsoft Internet Explorer contains buffer overflow in processing of object types

Overview

A remotely exploitable vulnerability has been discovered in Internet Explorer. Exploitation of this vulnerability may lead to the execution of arbitrary code.

I. Description

A remotely exploitable buffer overflow vulnerability has been discovered in Internet Explorer versions 5.1, 5.5 and 6.0. The <object> tag contains a "type" field used to determine how Internet Explorer should treat an object. It is possible to bypass the buffer checks on the input to the "type" field by using a specific character and cause a buffer overflow.

An attacker could create an HTML file that includes a malicious <OBJECT> tag to execute arbitrary code on the victim's machine. When a victim using a vulnerable version of IE, or other applications that use IE as their HTML interpreter, visits the malicious file (via web page, email message, file sharing, etc.), the attacker-supplied code will be executed.

II. Impact

Exploitation of this vulnerability may lead to the execution of arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user.

III. Solution

Microsoft has released MS03-020 to resolve this issue.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Notified	Date Updated
Microsoft Corporation	Vulnerable	4-Jun-2003

References

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/critical/818529/default.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins/ms03-020.asp
http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Advisories/AD20030604.html
http://www.secunia.com/advisories/8943/

Credit

Thanks to Microsoft Security and eEye Digital Security for reporting this vulnerability.

This document was written by Jason A Rafail.

Other Information

Date Public:	2003-06-04
Date First Published:	2003-06-04
Date Last Updated:	2003-06-04
CERT Advisory:
CVE-ID(s):	CAN-2003-0344
NVD-ID(s):	CAN-2003-0344
US-CERT Technical Alerts:
Metric:	17.47
Document Revision:	11

If you have feedback, comments, or additional information about this vulnerability, please send us email.

Get Adobe Reader