Microsoft Patch Repairs 6 IE Flaws

Microsoft Corp. on Monday released a cumulative patch that fixes six new vulnerabilities in several versions of Internet Explorer.

The patch is also designed to repair all known vulnerabilities in IE 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0.

The most serious of the new flaws is a buffer overflow associated with a specific HTML directive that could enable an attacker to run code on a users machine. This attack would not be possible, however, if the user had turned off the ActiveX Controls in his browser.

The five other vulnerabilities are:

• A flaw in the GetObject scripting function that allows an attacker to bypass some of the security checks made by this function and read files on a users machine.
• A problem in the way the HTML header fields are handled by IE during file downloads that enables an attacker to forge the name of the file being downloaded and force a user to save or open a malicious file.
• A vulnerability that could enable a Web page to open any file on a Web site by using any application on the users machine. IE should only be able to open files with the specific applications theyre associated with. This could force IE to open files with an unsafe application.
• A flaw that could enable a Web page to run a script, even if scripting is disabled.
• A new variant of an older vulnerability that could allow an attacker to open two Web browsers, one on his Web sites domain and one on the users local file system, and pass information between the two.

Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., has rated these vulnerabilities as critical risks, its most severe rating. The cumulative patch is available at the Microsoft security Web site at www.microsoft.com/technet/security.

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