Bring Down Internet Explorer In Six Words

Marcion writes "Some handy Japanese guy called Hamachiya discovered a bug in Internet Explorer. Under certain conditions, an asterisk when used as a wildcard can crash IE as soon as the user attempts to go to another page." The article claims the "five HTML tags and a CSS declaration" crash IE7 as well as IE6, but I couldn't get IE7 to fail. This page says that as of June, IE6 was at about 37% market share and IE7 under 20%.

Comments

Tear in my eye

[ceeam]

I didn't think I'll see the day when browser crashing on something would be a newsworthy item. We - the industry - have made improvements in the last years I guess.

Re:Tear in my eye

[somersault]

Either that, or /. is going downhill? That's the pessimist's view anyway ;)

Re:Tear in my eye

[Miseph]

Mac was taking it on the chin prior to about 2003 (when was it that Steve came back again?), their machines were lackluster and their marketing was weak. The release of OSX and their renewed marketing drive has brought them back from obscurity.

This had nothing to do with FOSS, and everything to do with Apple reclaiming a large chunk of its niche who had moved to Windows (as a group, that is; many of the old school Mac users probably didn't migrate, but new users coming into the traditional Mac niches weren't flocking to Mac fast enough to maintain market share) in the absence of anything from Apple that could inspire them to pay the premium.

This was totally unrelated to Linux/FOSS.

Re:Tear in my eye

[riceboy50]

when was it that Steve came back again? 1997.

If you don't speak Japanese....

[Dogtanian]

...then here's a word perfect translation of that article (courtesy of Babelfish).

Erm... then again, maybe not.

(If you liked that translation, you might enjoy Babelfish's attempt at Slashdot.jp.)

Re:If you don't speak Japanese....

[arkhan_jg]

From slashdot.jp:

When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?

Heh. I can just imagine a 'tie-inspector' walking round making sure your business attire is up to standard, or else he unleashes an angry cat on you. Or maybe he tortures a cute kitten in front of you, not sure on that point.

Re:If you don't speak Japanese....

[Barny]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292245,00.html

Ask and ye shall receive :)

A bit anti-climactic really.

Re:If you don't speak Japanese....

[Gregory Cox]

Obviously it should read:

When Thai police violate a rule, they get the Hello Kitty punishment.

See? Makes perfect sense.

Re:If you don't speak Japanese....

[uhmmmm]

Here's a quick translation I just did:

Hello! Good afternoon!!!!!
I stumbled across a browser crash, so today I'll tell you about it!

Here it is!

<style>*{position:relative}</style><table><input>< /table>

    Sample (If you're using IE, your browser will close! You have been warned!)

It seems IE6 or programs using IE6 components will definitely crash!
I haven't checked IE7 though!

It seems to be when you have and input or select or such just below a table or tr or such,
and you use the css wildcard * to set everything to position:relative.

By the way, if the input has its style directly set to relative, it doesn't crash. What's up with that?
I don't really get it, but it sure is interesting...!

Anyone out there who loves Firefox or Opera should go spread this all over and decrease IE's market share!!!

Hmm..

[wumpus188]

It indeed crashes IE here... Windows 2K3, IE7

Re:Hmm..

[GIL_Dude]

IE 7 on Vista here did have the crash just as documented. Open a new tab and start typing a URL and it crashed it.

Bring Down A Website In Six Words

[millwall]

Post
A
Crappy
Article
On
Slashdot

Re:Bring Down A Website In Six Words

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Pacaos? That's an interesting acrostic. What does it mean?

PacaOS is the operating system for Pacas - its a fork of rodentOS. HTH.

Re:Bring Down A Website In Six Words

[Odiumjunkie]

I discovered a weird IE bug... there are six words that, when included on a webpage, stop IE ever being used on that computer again:

get
firefox
from
mozilla
dot
com

Re:Bring Down A Website In Six Words

[Marcion]

Classic, how cool is that! No smoke yet! Anyhow, here is the mirror if you can't get through right now:

http://www.networkmirror.com/tQxFeWtOc31fVZfD/comm andline.org.uk/2007/how-to-bring-down-internet-exp lorer-with-six-words/index.html

Is it crashed or not?

[Dogtanian]

It indeed crashes IE here... Windows 2K3, IE7 I'm using IE7 bog-standard Windows XP with SP2, and it "crashed" in the manner described for me too. Remember that (as the article states) you have to open a new tab.

It takes a few seconds to crash after the new tab is opened; that's enough time to type in an auto-completed URL and have it start loading. Strange thing about this is that even though Windows shows the standard "crashed" dialog box for IE, beneath that I can still see (e.g.) Slashdot continue to load in the background until I dismiss the dialog.

Re:Is it crashed or not?

[Bacon Bits]

It's not a crash, per se. It's a forced closure due to an illegal operation of one component of the browser with code in mshtml.dll.

An exception was thrown that was not properly caught. The error is caused by improper error trapping. Otherwise, the browser would just render things improperly or claim there was an error on the page because it doesn't properly parse and render the style tag.

Re:Is it crashed or not?

[GooberToo]

Pre-tell then, what is a crash?

When an exception is thrown and is not properly caught. The error is caused by improper error trapping. This is a classic "crash." ;)

Re:Is it crashed or not?

[mopower70]

Pre-tell then, what is a crash? If I could pre-tell what caused a crash, I'd avoid doing it in the first place. But I don't think the precogs come online until 2053 or something like that.

Re:Is it crashed or not?

[Cigarra]

My usage conforms completely to the usage in my office.

Bill?!? is that you??

Re:Is it crashed or not?

[ashitaka]

What does your office do? Hopefully nothing to do with computer development.

What you just described is an application or process hanging. The app cannot respond to any user inputs or messages from the OS and the app or even the entire system in the worst case becomes unresponsive.

When an app or process crashes it is no longer running and under a better-designed OS will have its memory cleaned up in garbage collection.

(Developing since 1979)

I know it's real subtle...

[Etherwalk]

> as of June, IE6 was at about 37% market share

Bring down my system in 13 chars.

[BlackPignouf]

:(){ :|:& };:

Re:Bring down my system in 13 chars.

[radu.stanca]

From here

It creates a function called ":" that accepts no arguments-- that's
the ":(){ ... }" part of the utterance.

The code in the function calls the recursively calls the function
and pipes the output to another invocation of the function-- that's
the ":|:" part. The "&" puts the call into the background-- that way
the child process don't die if the parent exits or is killed. Note
that by invoking the function twice, you get exponential growth in
the number of processes (nasty!).

The trailing ";" after the curly brace finishes the function definition
and the last ":" is the first invocation of the function that sets off
the bomb.

Most unpleasant...

Just replace ":" with some word, it will be easier to understand:

kill(){kill|kill&};kill

kill()
{
kill | kill &
};
kill

Re:Bring down my system in 13 chars.

[bob.appleyard]

The Bourne Shell, actually.

No. You're kidding. Can't be.

[Opportunist]

You can crash IE? Really? With a webpage? Who would have thought?

Seriously, here's a phone. Call someone who cares. Or at least isn't surprised. Or at least thinks it's newsworthy.

I don't care if I have to wave karma goodbye now, but sensibly, is there an event running today that tries to see how many really uninteresting, uninspired and utterly pointless "news" can make it to the front page on a single day? Yes, it's possible to crash IE. Hey, breaking news, you can even crash it in a way that allows you to execute arbitrary code. Wow. Teh horrorz.

This ain't news. It may be a new hole detected, but could we at least get less lurid subject lines that sound like it's the end of the world? How about "new bug in IE detected"? It would have been at least as accurate and more objective. You might get the same "duh, no kidding" replies, but at least people wouldn't make fun of you for making something trivial as an IE bug sound like it's the end of the internet.

Re:No. You're kidding. Can't be.

[apt142]

I think what they considered newsworthy about it is the fact that it can be done in 6 words. Not that the bug exists, but rather how simple it is to crash it. They should have put the foot up there for humor if they wanted to get that across IMHO.

That being said, crashing IE is only slightly more difficult that tying my shoes.

Re:No. You're kidding. Can't be.

[bl8n8r]

> Seriously, here's a phone. Call someone who cares. Or at least isn't surprised. Or at least thinks it's newsworthy.

Attitudes like this are why computer security is in such a dismal state. Crashing an application from a remote system means that application is not filtering it's input correctly and is subject to a remote compromise. Just because IE goes bu-bye and starts right up again doesn't mean everything is peaches. By the time you've restarted the app or rebooted windows, you may have already been compromised with the software of choice by the remote. This cold be a backdoor, keylogger, trojan whatever - and you won't even know it other than "my computer is slow". People need to wise-up because malware is getting sneakier and more cost effective for the people that write it.

Articles like this are news worthy because it brings light to the fact that something is amiss and needs fixing. Unfortunately, other than negative PR, there's little incentive for proprietary software to fix these things. That's one of the reasons IE has been, and still is, such a security nightmare. Firefox is only about 2/3 better (3 pages vs. 8 pages) judging by number of CVEs*. Still, security is about lessening risk. It's foolish to use IE these days with much better options available.

[*] - https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/html/search

Re:No. You're kidding. Can't be.

[InsaneGeek]

> When was the last time you saw Firefox or Safari or Konquror able to be crashed with a malformed web page?

Umm... 9 days ago?

http://secunia.com/advisories/26201/

The vulnerability is caused due to an input validation error within the handling of system default URIs with registered URI handlers (e.g. "mailto", "news", "nntp", "snews", "telnet"). This can be exploited to execute arbitrary commands when a user e.g. using Firefox visits a malicious website with a specially crafted "mailto" URI containing a "%" character and ends in a certain extension (e.g. ".bat", ".cmd")

This command would make firefox go "away"
mailto:test%25../../../../windows/system32/tskill. exe firefox.cmd

html source is:

[Anonymous Coward]

* {position:relative}
</style><table><input></table>

Re:html source is:

[derrida]

And here is a link to test it.

Re:html source is:

[nschubach]

And VS2005 puts the problem somewhere around here...

mshtml.dll! 7dcaac6e() mov eax,dword ptr [ecx+4]

7DCAAC6C nop
7DCAAC6D nop
7DCAAC6E mov eax,dword ptr [ecx+4]
7DCAAC71 test al,1
7DCAAC73 jne 7DCB3229
7DCAAC79 and eax,2
7DCAAC7C ret
7DCAAC7D nop

Not that I have any clue what that means since I never learned assembly :p

Dr.Who

[gpmidi]

Dr.Who: I can bring down your administration in one word. Prime Minister: One word. Even you aren't capable of that. Dr.Who: Okay, six words. Dr.Who (wispers to aid): Don't you think she looks tired?

Evil Plans Thwarted

[PinkyDead]

DAMN YOU SLASHDOT!

Why go to all that trouble?

[annamadrigal]

Alt-F4 gets rid of it much more quickly, and doesn't rely on a Japanese website not having been /.ed.

No big deal.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

First please realize I am no MSFT fanboi, I have been extremely critical of that company in my previous postings.

MSFT should try to fix the bug that is crashing IE, because crashes in IE have a tendency to become a remote execution bug later. But still, no point in bashing MSFT on this issue. Browsers crashing on malformed input is well known. Firefox, my fav and only browser, too crashes often on malformed input. There is this thing called fuzzing, sending deliberately malformed input to the browser and see what happens. Firefox used to crash more often than IE under fuzzing. Now they provide fuzzing tools for their testers to strengthen mozilla products.

Common to Trident?

[Stefanwulf]

TFA's servers aren't responding at the moment, so this might be included, but has anyone tried this with non-IE programs which use the Trident layout engine?

If it's Trident that's bringing down IE, then you're looking at HTML code that could also bring down Windows Media Player, several versions of Outlook and Outlook Express, MSN Messenger, Steam (from Valve), and other applications which use it to render web pages. I think at least some versions of Winamp used trident as well, but I'm not sure about that.

Re:How is this fucking useful ??

[Dragonslicer]

200 HP? Is your shit a 20th level Barbarian or something?

IE Usage @ w3schools?

[asylumx]

as of June, IE6 was at about 37% market share and IE7 under 20%

Yeah, but don't you think w3schools would be a bit biased? W3schools is a site full of tutorials and information for developers. Developers tend to prefer FireFox due to its robust plugin system and some of the excellent plugins for that system (Firebug, Web Tools, etc.) so I'm not surprised that FireFox has a higher rate of use on such a site. In fact, I am surprised that it's not higher!

Re:IE Usage @ w3schools?

[kebes]

Yeah the w3schools stat of 34% firefox is higher than the global average. The Wikipedia page on browser share summarizes statistics from a wide variety of sources (and includes links, of course). As can be seen, the values vary depending the location and types of sites used in the stats. According to some reports, Firefox is nearing 28% usage across Europe. The global stats for generic sites seem to agree that Firefox usage is 12%-15%, versus Internet Explorer (all versions) being 75%-84%.

Still, this is a huge shift from the 96% share IE had a few years back. The fact that some sites get 30% Firefox usage (actually I run a small site that gets 46% Firefox) means that web developers can no longer ignore coding to standards. This is a good thing.

Funny, but not "Engrish"

[Dogtanian]

I'm for replacing the current Slashdot moderation options with hilarious Engrish ones: Oh yeah, "It is strange funny".... that was one I loved. (I've been "reading" Slashdot Japan through Babelfish for quite a while now- that's where my sig comes from).

However, it's misleading to call these "Engrish", as that normally refers to the use of bad English (or even pseudo-English) by the Japanese.

By contrast, this is a quaint auto-translation of correctly-written Japanese. Okay, so the "cute" tone is probably down to the differences between Japanese language and culture as well... but it's still not Engrish per se.

*Six* words? Amateurs.

[cbrichar]

Six words? Please.

As any pimply-faced 14 year old surfing the web alone in his bedroom could've told you, all it takes is your Mom unexpectedly calling your name from right outside your door to cause IE to be shut down immediately.

Re:Browser Metrics

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"I tend to use http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php more than the w3schools stats, they're usually more accurate since w3schools has a very specific audience."

It may be more accurate, but still not very, considering that it says that Latvia makes up 4% of web usage. ;)

So? One can easily crash Firefox too...

[bradbury]

If the point of this item is to point out bugs in IE it isn't alone. I crashed a large Epiphany session with a segmentation violation a couple of days ago and its relatively easy to crash Firefox if you limit the amount of memory available using ulimit (Firefox doesn't catch "early" C++ memory allocation failures and handle them gracefully). Firefox also has the infamous "window unexpectedly destroyed" bug (#263160) for ~3 years (which will crash the browser if you attempt to close the untitled window).

I suspect all of the Mozilla based browsers will effectively die if one throws enough "heavyweight" pages at them (i.e. those which are activity heavy [because there isn't a Javascript/Active HTML/Animated GIF scheduler]) or run out of swap space (again because memory allocation failures are not handled gracefully).

IMO, developers place too much emphasis on feature enhancements rather than making the existing browsers run reliably (bugs shouldn't linger for 3 years), with a minimal machine footprint (Netscape 4.7x required significantly less memory than Firefox) and effective priority scheduling of the "top" window (user responsiveness).

Also crashes Outlook...

[eglass1]

If you include it in the body of an HTML mail message.