Highly Critical Hole Found in IE

dotpavan writes "Eweek reports on a highly critical MS Internet Explorer hole found by Secunia Research's Andreas Sandblad. The vulnerability is due to the processing of the "createTextRange()" method call applied on a radio button control. From Secunia, "The vulnerability has been confirmed on a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Windows XP SP2." The vulnerability has also been confirmed in Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview (January edition) though it could be avoided by turning off Active Scripting, as suggested by Microsoft Security Response Center blog. How would this put MS in the market, hit by the ever-growing shots of vulnerabilties? And would the divorce of IE7 from Vista's Windows Explorer help?"

Patch available

here [mozilla.com]

mirror

here. [opera.com]

IE user, your house is on fire. Run for the hills! Go! Go!

Safest browser ever available

Here. [isc.org] Guaranteed not to be exploited by any javascript or plugin vulnerability. Or by any site that uses frames.

Re:Safest browser ever available

Lynx only seems safe because it has such a small marketshare. As soon as more people use it, hackers will target it more. You will see.

Re:Safest browser ever available

The only thing funnier than jokes about Lynx vulnerabilities is that there have been real ones. Remote shell access in Lynx [seclists.org], Lynx command injection [openpkg.org], Lynx NNTP buffer overflow [zone-h.org].

Maybe the thing to do is to telnet to port 80 and parse the HTML in your head, but then someone will probably find an HTML trick that will drive everyone who reads it insane.

Re:Patch available

Mozilla has bugs to. Lots of them. The difference, however is the time it takes to patch them.
Folks like Secunia can profit only when the patch takes a long time to develop. As long as it is a secret vulnerability, it has value. This vulnerability is the perfect example: MS was notified about this on 13/02/2006, 40 days ago. They had all the opportunity to fix it in this month's security patch, but thy did not. So the patch will come no earlier than 2 months after discovery - that's a huge window of exposure.
It was only when I have rediscovered the bug, and posted [seclists.org] an inquiry about it on the Full Disclosure mailing list, that Secunia rushed to finally publish the advisory. I must note that I did not develop the exploit independently, I simply piked it up on underground forums.
I say this is not "responsible disclosure", and that it is *irresponsible* to keep a bug of this magnitude unpatched for 2 months. Because there is a high risk that it will be found by the bad guys in the meantime - just like it happened with this bug.

--
Stelian ENE

Re:Patch available

I think that it's a matter of attitude, also. The referenced security blog says:

      We're going to continue to look into this but remind you also that safe browsing practices can
      help here, like only visiting trusted websites, etc.

The idea that the user should be careful about which sites they browse to is insane. It's hard to imagine a corporate culture that thinks this way, if it's a pervasive attitude, ever producing a reasonably secure product.

It's one thing to expect the user not to download an executable and then run it as Administrator. It's quite another to expect people to be "careful" which Google hits they click on.

Re:GAH

the cure to a problem is not hiding it.

Highly Critical Hole Found in IE?

Must be thursday.

Re:Highly Critical Hole Found in IE?

I could never quite get the hang of Thursdays.

Perhaps it would save time...

...if researchers just identified the bits that *weren't* totally insecure?

It is not a dupe!

It's a brand new hole!


--
Superb hosting [tinyurl.com] 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95

Not possible.

Can't... it's required for Windows Update! [microsoft.com] If you don't update, you're screwed!

Can't be secure with ActiveX, can't be secure without ActiveX... but what would happen if ActiveX didn't exist? [ubuntu.com]

Re:Not possible.

Disable ActiveX in the Internet Zone and add *.windowsupdate.com and *.microsoft.com to your trusted sites.

ActiveX really should only run from trusted sites anyway.

because

.. MS will eventually make a patch for it..

its the time period that sometimes makes it more panicky.

Slashthink.

So collectivist nerds can sit and giggle self-contentedly to themselves when MS looks bad.

Do what now?

TFA: Microsoft plans to release a pre-patch advisory with workarounds for a "highly critical" vulnerability that could put millions of Internet Explorer users at the mercy of malicious hackers

So this article updates us to the fact that they plan to update us with an article prior to the update?

Could be worst...

It could've been a very cynical hole in IE concerning when Windows Vista will finally be released.

How does this fare with previous statements?

With security being #1 in IE7, and numerous IE7 articles published by both microsoft and non-microsoft advocates praising the security and reliability of the new MS Browser, can we conclude that even with their upcoming browser media hype is still the best feature?

Personally, I understand if people don't want to use Firefox, it isn't the best browser either, no browser is the best across the board. I don't, however, understand why people want to continue to use Internet Explorer. It has been proven time and time again to be buggy, and patches take weeks longer than in most other browsers.

Not being a hardcore developer myself, I don't know what causes this, but might this have been avoided if Microsoft adhered to the Javascript standards rather than "tweaking it" for IE?

Re:How does this fare with previous statements?

Development problems aren't caused by hardcore developers. They are caused by hardcore management.

Re:How does this fare with previous statements?

Well it is a beta IE7 after all. Either way Vista will have IE seperated from the OS. The version of IE7 for XP will still be incorperated with the OS. So realistically IE7 for XP and IE7 for Vista will be very different browsers as far as security goes, and one can not assume a security hole for XP with exist (or matter) in the Vista version.

Proof of concept

<input type="radio" action="crash">

got it backwards

IE is the hole, into which are placed 'features' such as this exploit, tied to the feature called 'activex.' Remove these 'features' and all that is left is the nothingness that is a hole.

Use it for good not evil

createText("install firefox.exe");
createTextRange(-1);

And just let the exploit install firefox. It's just that easy.

Dupe!

Dupe!

Re:Dupe!

No, according to InfoWorld [infoworld.com], there are two bugs, so it's not a dupe, it's a second bug.

But, good catch!

I am...

...Jack's complete lack of surprise.

IE 7 in Vista would have been safe

IE 7, when run on Windows Vista, would not have fallen victim to this or any other exploit of this nature. The reason for this is the fact that IE 7 on Vista runs as a user with virtually no privileges, regardless of privileges of the user using IE 7.

Essentially all actions that require higher privileges, such as writing to non-temp locations on the file system, executing applications, installing plugins, changing settings, etc, will be done through the use of a broker.

The broker is very small, perhaps only a few thousand lines of code. This makes auditing the broker far easier than auditing the hundreds of thousands of lines in IE 7.

When IE 7 wants to save a file to the user's desktop, for instance, it must first "ask" the broker if it can do this. The broker is written in such a way that all actions require the user to confirm this is OK via a dialog box. If the user says it's OK the broker completes the action on behalf of IE 7.

If IE 7 has a buffer overflow or exploit of some kind and tries to do something nasty it will always fail because it is running as a user with basically no privileges on the system.

There is a video that describes this in detail on Microsoft's Channel 9 [msdn.com] web site.

Re:IE 7 in Vista would have been safe

This just goes to show that if you give MS enough time, they'll eventually be able to reinvent UNIX-like security. That's a relief.

Re:IE 7 in Vista would have been safe

How so? It's not uncommon for "special" system processes to need to be started as root but to give up the extra privileges as quickly as possible, but I have never heard of an "ordinary" user process switching to an even less privileged user account.

Besides which, the security model in NT-based systems is much richer than that in Linux-based systems. Unfortunately a few poor design/marketing decisions and a generation of sloppy coders too used to 9x-based systems has gone a long way to obviate that advantage, as far too many people simply run with administrative privileges.

That said, the clueless will always be a danger to themselves, whatever system they run.

MS Claims Latest IE 7 Beta is not Susceptible

The vulnerability has also been confirmed in Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview (January edition) though it could be avoided by turning off Active Scripting, as suggested by Microsoft Security Response Center blog.

Per the same blog, the 20 March release of IE7 Beta is not vulnerable.

Caveat emptor... I haven't tested it.

The 1st IE7 worm after the 'divorce' from windows

shall be named "alimony"!

But they spend 20 billion on making windows secure

So clearly this bug does not exist in Windows XP SP2 and most certainly the same bug does not exist in the completly Windows Vista.

Didn't we just have an article about MS wanting to go after Big Blue's business in the serious computer market? That they had spend 20 billion dollars on getting Windows ready to compete with the big boys and that IBM better look out?

Some MS fan boys of course swallowed that line hook, line and sinker. The same line MS has spun since it began business. "The next version will be lots better then what our competitor offers so please buy our [inferior] product now, we promise to ship the next version on time and as promised. Honestly. Have we ever lied to you before, or failed to meet a deadline, or failed to live up to our own hype?".

So the question by the poster of how this will affect MS in the market.

Not at all.

Simple as that. MS can keep producing crap and the public will continue to lap it up. I don't even care for the reasons and excuses anymore. They start to sound more and more like what you get at an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting or a session for battered wives.

As a LAMP developer I was recently offered a position with the opportunity to grow into .NET development. Gee thanks. What is the bonus package like? Kick in the nuts?

For those wondering what IE 7 and Vista will be really be like. More of the same old crap just a lot more useless crap that nobody really uses but that adds a lot of bloat that makes it impossible to debug. IF IE 1 - 6 have been buggy security holes and IE 7 has so far had the exact same bugs and security holes as 6 then it is obvious that MS hasn't really done anything with that supposed security audit of theirs.

First WMF now this. Vista is just another re-release of the same crap code that MS has been logging around since Billy boy first stole his basic interpreter.

Business as usuall. No doubt they will make a fat profit on it.

The Good News for Windows Users

The good news is that at least we know that IE 7 is backward compatible with IE 6 vulnerabilities.

Highly Critical

This hole will complain endlessly about your banal surfing habits and tell you taht are beginning to look a little fat. It's amazingly critical.

Re:Good week for MS

Well, of course it can, that's the point of an HTML Application. The problem is that they can be executed without the users permission.

Re:It's funny

Also, I note that there is no mention as yet (there is another story on the way) of the highly critical security flaw found in Sendmail which also had a proven potential for remote and local exploitation and arbitrary command execution. Actually this is potentially quite interesting; with remotely exploitable problems with both IE and Sendmail announced at almost the same time, I wonder which one we are going to see exploited by the blackhats first? Admittedly there are already updated packages for most Linux distros and commerical UNIX versions, plus a new release of the software (no offical Sun patch for Solaris yet though) which is going to tip the results a little, but still...

Re:It's funny

That in the very previous /. story about a Sun product vulnerability, the hackers get ripped, but when it's Microsoft, the software company gets ripped.

Here's the difference: In Sun's case, the hackers didn't alert Sun to the vulnerability. They just DOS'd a free service that Sun provided the world, causing headaches for people attempting to use the service. Their actions accomplished absolutely nothing (the grid was not affected), and resulted in Sun pulling a previously free product behind a security wall for which people are required to subscribe. Good going!

In this case, a researcher discovered a flaw in the browser, and instead of being an a$%hat by writing yet another worm or malicious program, alerted Microsoft to the bug. Which is now in the process of being patched.

DDOS is a vulnerability?

I wish I had mod points, because you'd be -10 moron.

If DDOS is a vulnerability, it's one that all systems share, and thus, we'd have to be extremely jaded and cynical for blaming Sun for getting hit with one.

It doesn't help that the existance of vulnerabilities in Microsoft's products is probably the reason it was so easy to attack Sun.

Re:In other news...

*sigh*

This is most likely the latest instance of the deep design flaw that the Microsoft HTML control has had since 1997, a flaw that no other browser (open source or commercial) suffers from, a flaw that Microsoft is going to have to break every application that uses the HTML control for anything but simple HTML display to fix... but which they absolutely have to do.

Compared to sendmail... this would be like Allman "fixing" the backdoor that the Internet Worm used by changing the password from "WIZARD" to "DEMON", then making patch after patch to keep the backdoor open... instead of simply taking it out as he did. Genuinely fixing a design flaw, rather than patching over instances of it, THAT is what "concentrating on security" means.