TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative

Microsoft Internet Explorer UTF-8 Decoding Heap Overflow Vulnerability

ZDI-06-017: June 13th, 2006

CVE ID

Affected Vendors

Affected Products

Vulnerability Details

This vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable installations of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Successful exploitation requires that the target user browse to a malicious web page. Exploitaton does not require JavaScript, Java or ActiveX to be enabled.

The specific vulnerability is due to a miscalculation of memory sizes when translating UTF-8 characters to Unicode. A size mismatch between a heap allocation and memory copy results in an exploitable heap corruption.

Vendor Response

Microsoft has issued an update to correct this vulnerability. More details can be found at:

Disclosure Timeline

    2006-01-20 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
    2006-06-13 - Coordinated public release of advisory

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by:
    Anonymous