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Bugtraq archives for 2nd quarter (Apr-Jun) 1999: Re: MSIE 5 favicon bug

Re: MSIE 5 favicon bug

Flavio Veloso (flaviovsCENTROIN.COM.BR)
Tue, 4 May 1999 14:15:56 -0300 

On Mon, 3 May 1999, Kurt Seifried wrote:

> > When MSIE 5 users bookmark a page, the browser will request a file
> > named "favicon.ico" which is to be used in the "Favorites" menu of the
> > browser. Unfortunately MSIE 5 doesn't check the file integrity and
> > crash if faced with a bad-formed icon file.
> >
> > Upon crashing the stack gets filled with information from the icon
> > file itself, so it may be possible to run code on the client machine,
> > tough I didn't test it.
>
> Doesn't work for me. NT Server 4.0, SP4, MSIE 5.0 (5.00.2314.1003). Tried
> repeatedly.

Due to some reports, it seems that NT users aren't affected. The GPF
is triggered in the USER.EXE module which I bet is different from the
one on Win 95/98, where I did my tests. You're the first one to report
that OSR/2 isn't affected which sounds very strange to me, since it
came (I believe) before 98.

> > Microsoft was notified twice about this issue via the "Report a Bug"
> > form on their web site. The first time about one month ago, the second
> > time about two weeks ago. I didn't receive back any reply.
>
> Tried it from a couple of Win95 (OSR/2, no patches) machines with MSIE 5.0,
> no crash either... if anyone can replicate this I'd be curious to know. How
> have you gone about testing this? Which platform(s)? Win98 only?

I tested it in two different machines:

* Windows 95 + IE 5.00.2314.1003

* Windows 98 + IE 5.00.2314.1003IS (the "IS" is because this is
  a Portuguese version of the browser, I guess)

Both crashed miserably.

--
Flavio