COMMAND
IIS
SYSTEMS AFFECTED
IIS 4.0, 5.0 (upgraded from IIS 3.0)
PROBLEM
Peter Grundl found following. A system with Internet Information
Server 4.0 or 5.0 that was upgraded from 3.0, contains unused
remains from 3.0 due to functionality changes in 4.0. Since it's
easy to "accidentally" install 3.0 when you install the server,
there is bound to be quite a few systems out there that haven't
cleaned out the no longer used scripts and thus are vulnerable.
Issuing a malformed request for a certain file contained in
/scripts/iisadmin can result in the webserver going into to an
infinite loop, causing the web server to no longer accept
requests. The service will continue to "pick up" on TCP port 80
(or where ever you installed it), but will not honour HTTP
requests. During testing of this, it was usually necessary to
reboot the machine in order for IIS to start working again, simply
attempting to stop and start inetinfo did not work.
SOLUTION
Microsoft has released the following bulletin concerning the
issue, including a patch:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS00-044.asp
Fix:
IIS 4.0: http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/Release.asp?ReleaseID=22709
IIS 5.0: http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/Release.asp?ReleaseID=22708