COMMAND
Internet Explorer and Outlook Express
SYSTEMS AFFECTED
IE5 and OE5
PROBLEM
Neon Bunny found following. He discovered a little problem that
would cause IE5 to "hang". The problem lies in the fact that IE5
can't place large HTML form text fields in a HTML table cell. A
page which contains the source below hangs IE5 as does anything
which uses it's html control like the preview section of
Interdev(SP3), FrontPage Express and more importantly the HTML
email reading section of Outlook Express 5. It also causes 100%
processor usage until the offending process is killed.
He has tested this on Windows 98 and Windows 2000, both of which
are affected, although Netscape 4.6 allows the table's cell to
resize around the large text field and so isn't affected.
<html>
<head>
<title>NeonBunny's IE5 Crasher</title>
</head>
<body>
<form method="POST">
<table>
<tr>
<td width="20%"><input type="text" name="State" size="99999999"
maxlength="99999999" value=""></td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
</body>
</html>
Seems that Eudora (don't know which version, but ASSume the
"latest") can do interesting things with HTML code snippets
included in email. Bingo, email bomb for "some" Eudora clients.
SOLUTION
Microsoft view is that this doesn't cut the mustard as a
vulnerability, its just one of those endless loop thingies. Kill
IE and don't go to the site...!? Well, Netscape works great too!