Vulnerability Note VU#228569

Microsoft Internet Explorer property memory corruption vulnerability

Overview

A vulnerability in the way Microsoft Internet Explorer handles malformed property objects may may lead to execution of arbitrary code.

I. Description

Microsoft Internet Explorer contatins a vulnerabilty that could be exploited when Internet Explorer attempts to interpret Web pages that contain malformed property objects. According to Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-010:

When Internet Explorer calls the property method it may corrupt memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code.

Note that this issue affects Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7.

II. Impact

A remote, unauthenticated attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user who is running the vulnerable application or cause a denial-of-service condition.

III. Solution

Update

Microsoft has released an update to address this issue. See Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-010 for more details.

Disable scripting

Disable scripting as specified in the Securing Your Web Browser document and the Malicious Web Scripts FAQ.

Do not follow unsolicited links

In order to convince users to visit their sites, attackers often use URL encoding, IP address variations, long URLs, intentional misspellings, and other techniques to create misleading links. Do not click on unsolicited links received in email, instant messages, web forums, or internet relay chat (IRC) channels. Type URLs directly into the browser to avoid these misleading links. While these are generally good security practices, following these behaviors will not prevent exploitation of this vulnerability in all cases, particularly if a trusted site has been compromised or allows cross-site scripting.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Updated
Microsoft Corporation	Vulnerable	13-Feb-2008

References

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-010.mspx
http://secunia.com/advisories/28903/
http://labs.idefense.com/intelligence/vulnerabilities/display.php?id=661

Credit

This vulnerability was reported in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-010. Microsoft credits an anonymous researcher working with TippingPoint and the Zero Day Initiative for reporting this issue.

This document was written by Chris Taschner.

Other Information

Date Public	02/12/2008
Date First Published	02/13/2008 03:09:47 PM
Date Last Updated	02/13/2008
CERT Advisory
CVE Name	CVE-2008-0077
US-CERT Technical Alerts
Metric	15.53
Document Revision	11