Overview
Microsoft Windows contains a remote code execution vulnerability in the way that the Windows Shell launches applications. An remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code if they could trick a user into visiting a malicious website.
Description
Microsoft Windows includes a Shell application programming interface (API) that allow integration and extention of the system's operational environment, or shell. Some functions of the API enable you to add features to the shell and the user interface components it provides. Others enable you to build similar conventions for your own application. The API supports the ability to associate a class identifier (CLSID) with a file type. An attacker could create a malicious website or HTML message and use a CLSID instead of the valid extension for a file type to persuade a user to run a malicious program. In order for a remote attacker to exploit this vulnerability, they would have to trick a user into visiting a malicious website. Further actions may be required of the user. For more information, see Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-024. |
Impact
An remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code if they could trick a user into visiting a malicious website. The code would execute with the privileges of the current user. |
Solution
Microsoft has released a patch for this issue in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-024. |
Vendor Information
CVSS Metrics
Group | Score | Vector |
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Base | ||
Temporal | ||
Environmental |
References
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Microsoft for reporting this vulnerability.
This document was written by Jason A Rafail and based on information provided in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-024.
Other Information
CVE IDs: | CVE-2004-0420 |
Severity Metric: | 26.65 |
Date Public: | 2004-07-13 |
Date First Published: | 2004-07-14 |
Date Last Updated: | 2004-07-14 14:01 UTC |
Document Revision: | 5 |