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Microsoft patches more IE security gaps
Friday, May 17 2002
by The Register


Microsoft released another cumulative patch for Internet Explorer, which promises
to plug six recently discovered security defects involving the browser. 

The patch, for Internet Explorer 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0, includes the functionality of
previously released fixes, as well as tackling the new problems -- the most
serious of which could allow an attacker to run code of his choice on a victim's
machine. Microsoft describes the patch as 'critical', writes John Leyden.






Six of the worst 





The most serious bug involves a cross-site scripting vulnerability. IE ships with
several files that contain HTML on the local file system, one of which contains a
flaw that could allow a script to execute as if it were run by the user. This bug
could be exploited by an attacker who tricks victims into either visiting a
maliciously constructed Web page or opening HTML e-mail containing a poisoned
script. 





Next up us is an information disclosure vulnerability related to a buggy HTML
object, which is designed to provide support for Cascading Style Sheets. Because
of the bug, an attacker might be able to read, but not delete or change, data on
a local system, Microsoft says. 





Moving on, there is an information disclosure vulnerability involving to the
handling of script within cookies, which could potentially allow one site to read
the cookies of another. 





Also, there's a zone spoofing vulnerability that could allow a Web page to be
incorrectly reckoned to be in the Intranet zone or, in some very rare cases, in
the Trusted Sites zone. 





Finally there are two variants of a 'content disposition' vulnerability, which
relate to how IE handles downloads when a downloadable file's Content-Disposition
and Content-Type headers are intentionally malformed. Virus writers might use the
technique to disguise the fact that an attachment contains executable content,
hence the need for the patch. 





As well as plugging up the six vulnerabilities listed above, Microsoft's patch
also disables frames in the Restricted Sites zone. The change means that recently
released Microsoft e-mail clients (and those with Outlook E-mail Security Update
installed) will disable frames in HTML e-mail by default, blocking the
possibility of an HTML e-mail automatically opening a new window or launching the
download of an executable. At least that's the idea. 





Users can read about the problems in more detail, and get links to the relevant
patch, in Microsoft's HREF="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS02-023.asp">advisory
on the subject. 





The Register and its contents are
copyright 2002 Situation Publishing. Reprinted with permission.