Signature Detail

SMTP: Outlook Mailto Command Execution

This signature detects attempts to exploit a known vulnerability against Outlook 2002 mail client. Attackers can use mailto: URLs that contain " strings to execute arbitrary script commands, enabling them to execute code remotely.

Extended Description

Microsoft Outlook is prone to a vulnerability that may permit execution of arbitrary code on client systems. This issue is exposed through Outlook, but will reportedly cause Internet Explorer to load malicious content in the Local Zone. This is related to how mailto URIs are handled by the software and may be exploited from a malicious web page or through HTML e-mail. This issue will permit a remote attacker to influence how Outlook invoked via mailto URIs, allowing for execution of malicious scripting in the Local Zone through an attacker-specified Outlook profile parameter. ** It was initially reported that exploitation of this issue will depend on the Outlook Today page being the default folder homepage. Additional details have been made available to indicate that in situations where this is not the default page, it is possible to use two mailto URIs to exploit the issue. The first URI would display the Outlook Today view and the second would include an embedded JavaScript URI.

Affected Products

• Microsoft Office XP SP1
• Microsoft Office XP SP2
• Microsoft Office XP
• Microsoft Outlook 2002 SP1
• Microsoft Outlook 2002 SP2
• Microsoft Outlook 2002

References

• BugTraq: 9827
• CVE: CVE-2004-0121
• URL: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms04-009.mspx
• URL: http://www.idefense.com/application/poi/display?id=79&type=vulnerabilities&flashstatus=true