Vulnerability Note VU#771788

Microsoft Internet Explorer vulnerable to remote code execution

Original Release date: 14 Feb 2007 | Last revised: 13 Mar 2007

Overview

A vulnerability in the way Microsoft Internet Explorer instantiates COM objects may lead to execution of arbitrary code.

Description

Component Object Model, or COM objects, are used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation within Microsoft Windows. Microsoft Internet Explorer contains a vulnerability that could be exploited when it attempts to load specially crafted web sites that instantiate specific COM objects contained in Msb1fren.dll, Htmlmm.ocx, or Blnmgrps.dll. According to Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-016

    When Internet Explorer tries to instantiate certain COM objects as ActiveX controls, the COM objects may corrupt the system state in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code.


Note that this vulnerability does not affect Windows Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista.

Impact

A remote, unauthenticated attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial-of-service condition.

Solution

Update
Microsoft has released an update to address this issue. See Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-016 for more details.

Disable ActiveX


Disabling ActiveX controls in the Internet Zone (or any zone used by an attacker) appears to prevent exploitation of this vulnerability. Instructions for disabling ActiveX in the Internet Zone can be found in the document Securing Your Web Browser and the Malicious Web Scripts FAQ.

Note that disabling ActiveX controls in the Internet Zone will reduce the functionality of some web sites.

Systems Affected (Learn More)

VendorStatusDate NotifiedDate Updated
Microsoft CorporationAffected-14 Feb 2007
If you are a vendor and your product is affected, let us know.

CVSS Metrics (Learn More)

Group Score Vector
Base N/A N/A
Temporal N/A N/A
Environmental N/A N/A

References

Credit

This vulnerability was reported in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-016. Microsoft credits H D Moore of BreakingPoint Systems for reporting this issue.

This document was written by Chris Taschner.

Other Information

  • CVE IDs: CVE-2007-0219
  • Date Public: 13 Feb 2007
  • Date First Published: 14 Feb 2007
  • Date Last Updated: 13 Mar 2007
  • Severity Metric: 25.65
  • Document Revision: 18

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