A security issue has been reported in Microsoft's Web Proxy Auto-Discovery (WPAD) feature, which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks.

The problem is that the WPAD feature resolves "wpad" hostnames up to the second-level domain, which is potentially untrusted. This can be exploited to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks against third-level or deeper domains.

Successful exploitation requires e.g. that the system has a primary DNS suffix configured (please see the vendor's advisory for details and other mitigating factors).

Solution
The vendor has provided various workarounds. Please see the vendor's advisory for details.

Provided and/or discovered by
The vendor credits Beau Butler.

Original Advisory
Microsoft (KB945713):
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/945713.mspx

Alternate/detailed remediation
Further details available in Customer Area

Deep Links
Links available to Secunia VIM customers