Microsoft Internet Explorer CSS Import Use-After-Free Code Execution

Added: 12/22/2010
CVE: CVE-2010-3971
BID: 45246
OSVDB: 69796

Background

Internet Explorer is an HTML web browser which comes by default on Microsoft operating systems. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style to web documents.

Problem

Microsoft Internet Explorer is vulnerable to a use-after-free memory corruption vulnerability due to the way **mshtml.dll** handles CSS files with multiple import statements.

Resolution

Apply the patch referenced in Microsoft Security Advisory 2488013 when it becomes available.

References

<http://secunia.com/advisories/42510&gt;

Limitations

Exploit works on Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP SP3.

The user must open a specially crafted CSS file in Internet Explorer 8.

Platforms

Windows XP