Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Ls­Find­Span­Visual­Boundaries memory corruption

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability marked as critical has been reported in Microsoft Internet Explorer 8. This affects the function Ptls5::Ls­Find­Span­Visual­Boundaries. The manipulation leads to memory corruption. Remote exploitation of the attack is possible. No exploit is available.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, has been found in Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (Web Browser). This issue affects the function Ptls5::Ls­Find­Span­Visual­Boundaries. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a memory corruption vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-119. The product performs operations on a memory buffer, but it can read from or write to a memory location that is outside of the intended boundary of the buffer. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

The weakness was published 11/21/2016 by Berend-Jan Wever (SkyLined) as MSIE8 MSHTML Ptls5::Ls­Find­Span­Visual­Boundaries memory corruption as not defined mailinglist post (Full-Disclosure). It is possible to read the advisory at seclists.org. The vendor was not involved in the public release. The attack may be initiated remotely. No form of authentication is needed for a successful exploitation. It demands that the victim is doing some kind of user interaction. Technical details of the vulnerability are known, but there is no available exploit. The pricing for an exploit might be around USD $25k-$100k at the moment (estimation calculated on 04/07/2017). It is expected to see the exploit prices for this product decreasing in the near future. The advisory points out:

The memory corruption causes the `Ptls5::LsFindSpanVisualBoundaries` method to access data at seemingly random addresses. However, these addresses appear to always be in the same range as valid heap addresses, even if they are often not DWORD aligned. The reason for the memory corruption is not immediately obvious.

The advisory illustrates:

JavaScript is not necessarily required to trigger the issue.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Type

• Web Browser

Vendor

• Microsoft

Name

• Internet Explorer

Version

• 8

License

• commercial

Support

• end of life

Website

• Vendor: https://www.microsoft.com/

CPE 2.3info

• 🔍

CPE 2.2info

• 🔍

CVSSv4info

CVSSv3info

CVSSv2info

Exploitinginfo

Threat Intelligenceinfo

Countermeasuresinfo

Timelineinfo

Sourcesinfo

Entryinfo

Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

Discussion