[NT] Internet Explorer Handling of %20 Allows Spoofing

From: SecuriTeam (support_at_securiteam.com)
Date: 01/17/05

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    Date: 17 Jan 2005 14:19:35 +0200
    
    

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      Internet Explorer Handling of %20 Allows Spoofing
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------

    SUMMARY

    Internet Explorer supports two forms of URI (Universal Resource
    Identifiers), a full qualified domain name and dotted IP. Whenever
    Internet Explorer receives the dotted IP form, it will ignore any
    characters written after an escape space sign (%20). This opens the user
    to attack has he can be tricked into thinking he is connecting a certain
    server while in fact he is connected to another.

    DETAILS

    Vulnerable Systems:
     * Internet Explorer version 6.0 SP1
     * Internet Explorer version 6.0 SP2
     * Internet Explorer version 5.0
     * Internet Explorer version 5.5

    Apparently IE handles IPs in URLs as something like (as you might expect):
     http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/

    But the problem is if you put a %20 in the IP address like this, it will
    still render (assuming I am under 16 charachters between the slashes):
     http://x.x.x.x%20/

    It is looking for 16 charachters and ignores anything after the %20
    (space). This becomes a problem is in the case of a short URL you can put
    in some data here, like so:
     http://x.x.x.x%20a.com/

    Further, if the real IP address is on a server that can handle this (IIS
    doesn't know how to handle it in all the cases I have tested, but Apache
    handles it fine by default) and you have either Earthlink's
    FraudEliminator or CoreStreet's SpooofStick, they give incorrect
    information. (Please don't hit this poor guy's IP, he just happened to
    have one short enough to test this):
     <http://www.shocking.com/~rsnake/images/rs/percenttwenty.jpg>
    http://www.shocking.com/~rsnake/images/rs/percenttwenty.jpg

    ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

    The information has been provided by <mailto:rsnake@shocking.com> RSnake.

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