Internet Explorer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when Internet Explorer does not properly enforce cross-domain policies, which could allow an attacker to access information from one domain and inject it into another domain.

In a web-based attack scenario, an attacker could host a website that is used to attempt to exploit the vulnerability. In addition, compromised websites and websites that accept or host user-provided content could contain specially crafted content that could exploit the vulnerability. In all cases, however, an attacker would have no way to force users to view the attacker-controlled content. Instead, an attacker would have to convince users to take action. For example, an attacker could trick users into clicking a link that takes them to the attacker’s site. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could elevate privileges in affected versions of Internet Explorer.

The vulnerability by itself does not allow arbitrary code to be run. However, the vulnerability could be used in conjunction with another vulnerability (for example, a remote code execution vulnerability) that could take advantage of the elevated privileges when running arbitrary code. For example, an attacker could exploit another vulnerability to run arbitrary code through Internet Explorer, but due to the context in which processes are launched by Internet Explorer, the code might be restricted to run at a low integrity level (very limited permissions). However, an attacker could, in turn, exploit this vulnerability to cause the arbitrary code to run at a medium integrity level (permissions of the current user).

The update addresses the vulnerability by helping to ensure that cross-domain policies are properly enforced in Internet Explorer.