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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?"
here
Must be thursday.
...if researchers just identified the bits that *weren't* totally insecure?
It's a brand new hole!
--
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the cure to a problem is not hiding it.
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?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
its the time period that sometimes makes it more panicky.
It could've been a very cynical hole in IE concerning when Windows Vista will finally be released.
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?
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
Can't... it's required for Windows Update! 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?
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.
Moderation in All Things... Especially Moderation - gurutc
createText("install firefox.exe");
createTextRange(-1);
And just let the exploit install firefox. It's just that easy.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
here.
IE user, your house is on fire. Run for the hills! Go! Go!
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
No, according to InfoWorld, there are two bugs, so it's not a dupe, it's a second bug.
But, good catch!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...Jack's complete lack of surprise.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
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.
Humorless sig goes here.
So collectivist nerds can sit and giggle self-contentedly to themselves when MS looks bad.
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.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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 web site.
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.
Here. Guaranteed not to be exploited by any javascript or plugin vulnerability. Or by any site that uses frames.
shall be named "alimony"!
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
The good news is that at least we know that IE 7 is backward compatible with IE 6 vulnerabilities.
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
I can't remember the last time I used Windows Update. Automatic Updates does most of what I used WU for, even more easily. If I want other updates, Windiz Update is very similar, but works in non-IE browsers.