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Microsoft Internet Explorer contains buffer overflow in processing of object types

Vulnerability Note VU#679556

Original Release Date: 2003-06-04 | Last Revised: 2003-06-04

Overview

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

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.

Impact

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

Solution

Microsoft has released MS03-020 to resolve this issue.

Vendor Information

679556
 

Microsoft Corporation Affected

Updated:  June 04, 2003

Status

Affected

Vendor Statement

We have not received a statement from the vendor.

Vendor Information

The vendor has not provided us with any further information regarding this vulnerability.

Addendum

Please see http://www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins/ms03-020.asp.

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


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References

Acknowledgements

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

This document was written by Jason A Rafail.

Other Information

CVE IDs: CVE-2003-0344
Severity Metric: 17.47
Date Public: 2003-06-04
Date First Published: 2003-06-04
Date Last Updated: 2003-06-04 20:33 UTC
Document Revision: 13

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