NSFOCUS Security Advisory(SA2005-02)

Topic: Microsoft IE Devenum.dll COM Instantiation Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Release Date: 2005-08-10

CVE CAN ID: CAN-2005-1990

http://www.nsfocus.com/english/homepage/research/0502.htm

Affected systems & software

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 SP4
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 SP2
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 SP1

Unaffected systems & software

Description

NSFocus Security Team discovered a security vulnerability in Microsoft Internet
Explorer. By crafting a malicious HTML page and alluring users to visit it,
a remote attacker can execute arbitrary code with the privilege of the user.

Internet Explorer does not properly call interface arguments when instantiating
COM component in devenum.dll, resulting in exceptional memory access which
might cause IE to crash. Carefully crafted HTML page might allow a remote
attacker to execute arbitrary code.

Workaround

Disable ActiveX control in Internet Explorer.

Vendor Status

2005.07.13 Informed the vendor.
2005.07.16 The vendor confirmed the vulnerability
2005.08.09 The vendor releases a security bulletin (MS05-038) and related
patches.

Detail Microsoft Security Bulletin is available at:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS05-038.mspx

Additional Information

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned the
name CAN-2005-1990 to this issue. This is a candidate for inclusion in the
CVE list (http://cve.mitre.org), which standardizes names for security problems.
Candidates may change significantly before they become official CVE entries.

Acknowledgment

Hu Qianwei of NSFOCUS Security Team found the vulnerability.

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Copyright 1999-2005 NSFOCUS. All Rights Reserved. Terms of use.

NSFOCUS Security Team <[email protected]>
NSFOCUS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CO.,LTD
(http://www.nsfocus.com)

PGP Key: http://www.nsfocus.com/homepage/research/pgpkey.asc
Key fingerprint = F8F2 F5D1 EF74 E08C 02FE 1B90 D7BF 7877 C6A6 F6DA