Microsoft Internet Explorer MIME Type File Extension Spoofing Vulnerability


Microsoft Internet Explorer uses the Content-Type and Content- Disposition HTML header fields to determine the file type of non- HTML files referenced by a website. These two content headers make up the MIME type of the field.


It is possible to insert information into the Content-Type and Content-Disposition fields that would tell Internet Explorer that a file being downloaded is of a different type than it actually is. This would not cause the file to be executed automatically, but could trick a vulnerable user into believing that they are downloading a text file instead of an executable file.

This vulnerablility was originally believed to be the same as the one reported in Bugtraq ID 3597, but was later found to be a different method of achieving the same goal.

Remote: Yes

Exploit: There is no exploit code.

Solution: Microsoft has released a patch to address this issue:



Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0.1SP2:

Microsoft Patch q316059_IE 5.01
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...01_sp2/NT5/EN- US/q316059.exe

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5SP2:

Microsoft Patch q316059_IE 5.5SP2
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...5_sp2/WIN98Me/ EN-US/q316059.exe

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5SP1:

Microsoft Patch q316059_IE 5.5SP1
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...5_sp1/WIN98Me/ EN-US/q316059.exe

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0:

Microsoft Patch q316059_IE6
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...8NT42KMeXP/EN- US/q316059.exe