Software Engineering Institute

There is a remotely exploitable buffer overflow in the ISAPI (Indexing Service Application Programming Interface) extension (IDQ.DLL) installed with most versions of IIS 4.0 and 5.0. This affects Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 (Server and Professional), Windows 2000 Datacenter OEM distributions, Indexing Server 2.0, and the Indexing Services on all Windows 2000 platforms; however, not all of these instances are vulnerable by default. The beta versions of Windows XP are vulnerable by default.

The only precondition for exploiting this vulnerability is that an IIS server is running with script mappings for Internet Data Administration (.ida) and Internet Data Query (.idq) files. The Indexing Services do not need to be running. As stated by Microsoft in MS01-033:

The buffer overrun occurs before any indexing functionality is requested. As a result, even though idq.dll is a component of Index Server/Indexing Service, the service would not need to be running in order for an attacker to exploit the vulnerability. As long as the script mapping for .idq or .ida files were present, and the attacker were able to establish a web session, he could exploit the vulnerability.

When this buffer overflow is exploited, a remote user may be able run arbitrary code on the victim machine with SYSTEM privileges (which the IIS service has by default).

Microsoft has released patches for this vulnerability that can be downloaded from

http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/Release.asp?ReleaseID=30833 (NT)
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/Release.asp?ReleaseID=30800 (Windows 2000)

For more information, see MS01-033 and the eEye Digital Security bulletin.

Microsoft has released a patch which supercedes the two listed above. Please see MS01-044 for more information.

Remote intruders can execute arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges in the Local System security context.

Apply patches for vulnerable Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 systems:
Windows NT 4.0:
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/Release.asp?ReleaseID=30833
Windows 2000 Professional, Server and Advanced Server:
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/Release.asp?ReleaseID=30800

Users of Windows 2000 Datacenter Server software should contact their original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for patches.

Microsoft has released a patch which supercedes the two listed above. Please see MS01-044 for more information.

Workarounds