Secunia

Stefan Esser has discovered a vulnerability in Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct cross-site scripting attacks.

The vulnerability exists because pages that don't specify a charset inherit the charset of the parent page. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary HTML and script code in a user's browser session in context of certain sites that are included e.g. via iframes in a malicious page that uses UTF-7 as charset.

Successful exploitation requires that the user is tricked into visiting a malicious web site.

The vulnerability is confirmed in Internet Explorer 7 and 8 on a fully patched Windows XP. Other versions may also be affected.

Solution
Do not browse untrusted sites.

Provided and/or discovered by
Stefan Esser. Additional information related to Internet Explorer 8 provided by Inferno.

Changelog
Further details available in Customer Area

Original Advisory
Stefan Esser:
http://www.hardened-php.net/advisory_032007.142.html

Inferno:
http://securethoughts.com/2009/05/exploiting-ie8-utf-7-xss-vulnerability-using-local-redirection/

Deep Links
Links available in Customer Area