More information: http://www.secunia.com/advisories/10395

I just learned of a new and very dangerous exploit for Internet Explorer.
If you've been around the block long enough, you've seen the URL trick that
involves spoofing legitimate domain names by using user authentication to
make a URL look valid at its root. For example, you might see a URL like
this:

http://microsoft.com:[email protected]/files/report.html

The above is hypothetical, but you get the point. The @ is actually a
signal that you're logging into the site after the @, that is,
129.79.xxx.xxx. Your username is microsoft.com and your password is
windows. It's not hard to see why this fools many people: they think it's a
URL to Microsoft. This is one of the most popular ways scammers trick
people into giving out all kinds of sensitive information (like usernames
and passwords).

Well, it just got worse. An Internet Explorer URL Spoofing Vulnerability
has been found that can actually mask the URL that you're at and replace it
with something arbitrary.  You can test IE right here:

http://www.secunia.com/internet_explorer_address_bar_spoofing_test/

Even though the HTML points to
http://www.microsoft.com%[email protected]/internet_explorer_address_bar_spoofing_test/,
 IE will follow that link but http://microsoft.com is what you'll see in
your address bar. Get ready for a deluge of spam exploiting this.

This one is a little scary. There is no security patch yet, and no
workaround short of installing a different browser. For those of you in a
sysadmin position, it might be good to educate your users a little bit.

I'll update MCN if a patch becomes available.

======================================
Andrew Schuricht
Consultant, Las Vegas Springs Preserve Project




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