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eEye Advisory - EEYEB-20050316 - HTML Help File Parsing Buffer Overflow PDF Print E-mail
Thursday, 16 June 2005
Systems Affected:
Windows 98 / 98 SE
Windows Me
Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 / Service Pack 4
Windows XP Service Pack 1 / Service Pack 2
Windows XP 64-Bit Itanium SP 1
Windows XP 64-Bit Itanium 2003
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Windows 2003 Server / Service Pack 1
Windows 2003 for Itanium / Service Pack 1
Windows 2003 x64 Edition Overview:
eEye Digital Security has discovered a vulnerability in the way various versions of Windows handle Windows Help (.CHM) files. If exploited, this vulnerability allows arbitrary code to be executed by the remote attacker. A malicious .CHM file can be opened by Internet Explorer without user interaction by using the "ms-its" protocol specification; for example:

ms-its:\server\file.chm:/label.htm

This vulnerability affects any application that uses the Windows Help component of Internet Explorer internally.


Technical Details:
A CHM file can be specially crafted in order to cause a heap overflow, leading to one of the following exploitable situations:

(1) 1A40C0DD call dword ptr [ecx+18h] : we can control ECX, EAX points to our buffer

(2) 717AA58C call dword ptr [ecx+4] : we can control ECX, EAX points to our buffer

(3) 77F8C7A9 mov dword ptr [ecx],eax : we can control ECX and EAX, EDI points to our buffer

This heap overflow is caused by an integer overflow in a size field. Specifying a very high DWORD value (e.g., 0xFFFFFFFD) in this field will cause a buffer overflow and an excessive memory copy that overwrites all contiguous heap memory and eventually reaches a page boundary.

Protection:
Retina Network Security Scanner has been updated to identify this vulnerability. Blink Endpoint Protection defends against this vulnerability.

Vendor Status:
Microsoft has released a patch for this vulnerability. The patch is available at:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS05-026.mspx

Credit:
Discovery: Yuji Ukai

Related Links:

Retina Network Security Scanner - Free 15 Day Trial
http://www.eeye.com/html/products/retina/download/index.html

Retina Network Security Scanner - Japanese Edition
http://www.sse.co.jp/eeye/index.html

Greetings:
SSE Retina Team, All attendees of the workshop at Triton Square,
WAIGAYA@Ichigaya
 
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