[Full-disclosure] IE UXSS (Universal XSS in IE, was Re: Microsoft Internet Information Services UTF-7 XSS Vulnerability [MS06-053])

[Brian Eaton]

On 10/2/06, Paul Schmehl <pauls at utdallas.edu> wrote:
> --On October 2, 2006 9:44:27 AM -0400 Brian Eaton <eaton.lists at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > I'm guessing that you tested a server wth some kind of customized 404
> > response that neglected to include a charset specification.  That's
> > not a vulnerability in Apache, that is poor site configuration.
> >
> Brian, a question for clarification.  When you say "customized 404
> response", you are not referring to a customized error document (as
> described briefly in the httpd.conf file) but rather to having changed the
> headers that the server returns when queried with a GET request, correct?
> And wouldn't this require changing source code and compiling a custom
> build of apache?

I am referring to the customized error documents described in the
httpd.conf file.  No recompiling required.

The default Apache response for 404s includes a content-type header
specifying the iso-8859-1 charset.  If you set up an ErrorDocument
handler, though, Apache assumes you know what you are doing and does
not include a charset specification in the content-type header.  You
need to do it yourself.  Including a meta http-equiv tag in the HTML
seems like an obvious fix, but there are other ways as well.

Regards,
Brian