Description: Amit Klein has discovered a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to manipulate certain data and conduct HTTP request smuggling attacks.
Input passed to the method parameter in the "open()" function in the "Microsoft.XMLHTTP" ActiveX control isn't properly sanitised before being used in a HTTP request. This can be exploited to inject arbitrary HTTP requests via specially crafted input containing tab and newline characters (spaces are not allowed).
Successful exploitation requires that the HTTP request is sent to a server or via a proxy allowing tab characters instead of spaces in certain parts of the HTTP request.
It has also been reported that the "referer" HTTP header can modified via the "SetRequestHeader()" function by appending a colon ":" to the header name (normally Internet Explorer does not allow the "referer" header to be changed).
The vulnerability has been confirmed on a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Windows XP SP2. Other versions may also be affected.
Solution: Set security level to "High".
Provided and/or discovered by: Amit Klein
Additional information provided by:
anonymous
Changelog: 2005-09-28: Added information about the "referer" header provided by anonymous.
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