CVE-2003-0238 in ICQ
Summary
by MITRE
The Message Session window in Mirabilis ICQ Pro 2003a allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) by spoofing the address of an ADS server and sending HTML with a -1 width in a table tag.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 05/20/2019
The vulnerability described in CVE-2003-0238 represents a critical denial of service flaw within the Mirabilis ICQ Pro 2003a messaging client that demonstrates the dangers of improper input validation and resource handling in instant messaging applications. This vulnerability specifically targets the Message Session window component of the software, which processes incoming messages and displays them to users in a graphical interface. The flaw arises from the client's insufficient validation of HTML content received from remote sources, creating a pathway for malicious actors to exploit the application's rendering engine through carefully crafted malicious content.
The technical execution of this vulnerability involves the attacker spoofing the address of an Active Directory Server to establish a false connection with the target system. When the vulnerable ICQ client receives a message containing HTML markup with a table tag specifying a width value of -1, the client's HTML parser becomes trapped in a resource-intensive processing loop. This particular HTML attribute value triggers an infinite or extremely long loop within the client's rendering engine, causing the application to consume excessive CPU resources and effectively freeze or become unresponsive. The flaw operates at the application layer and leverages the client's trust in incoming HTML content without proper sanitization or validation of numerical attributes.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple service disruption as it can be exploited remotely without requiring any authentication or privileged access to the target system. Attackers can craft malicious messages that appear legitimate to unsuspecting users, potentially leading to widespread service disruption across networks where ICQ Pro 2003a is deployed. The vulnerability affects the overall availability of the messaging service and can be particularly problematic in enterprise environments where instant messaging clients are extensively used for business communications. Additionally, the resource exhaustion can potentially impact system performance and stability, affecting other applications running on the same machine.
This vulnerability maps to CWE-129, which addresses the weakness of insufficient validation of the length or value of input data, and aligns with ATT&CK technique T1499.004 for network denial of service attacks. The flaw demonstrates how improper input validation in client-side applications can lead to resource exhaustion attacks, which are categorized under the broader class of availability attacks. Organizations should implement immediate mitigations including updating to patched versions of the ICQ client, implementing network-level filtering to block suspicious HTML content, and educating users about the risks of opening messages from untrusted sources. The vulnerability also highlights the importance of proper HTML sanitization in messaging applications and the need for robust input validation mechanisms to prevent similar issues in other software components.