Microsoft flaw affects XP, Server 2003

Flaw could lead to DoS attack

By Jeremy Kirk

June 2, 2006 12:00 PM ET

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IDG News Service - A new flaw found in Microsoft Corp.'s software could be exploited to cause a denial-of-service attack on certain applications although the bug isn't viewed as being severe.

The flaw could be exploited through a buffer overflow attack, security vendor Secunia reported yesterday. A buffer overflow occurs when excess data flows into an area of memory, spilling over so that it overwrites data in adjacent areas or causes unintended code to execute.

The problem affects the Home and Professional editions of Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, and four versions of Windows Server 2003: Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard and Web edition, Secunia said in an advisory.

For the attack to occur, a user would have to be lured into visiting a malicious Web site with a long URL or else open an Internet shortcut that leads to such a site.

Microsoft said today that it was investigating the flaw and that it wasn't aware of any attacks that took advantage of it.

Secunia rated the vulnerability as "less critical," the second-lowest severity rating on its five-level scale. The flaw could be used to crash applications, but a hacker might not be able to run malicious code due to a prevention mechanism in Windows, the company said.

Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2009 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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