COMMAND
Netscape
SYSTEMS AFFECTED
Win '95, NT
PROBLEM
James Morris was recently doing some work with the JavaScript
'replace' method, and noticed that it was possible to put the
Netscape browser into a loop that the user couldn't easily get
out of (in NT, the only way to shut it down was via the taskbar).
Essentially, if you created a web page which could be referenced
as '/loop.html' which had the following JavaScript code:
function loop()
{
alert("Try and get out of this");
location.replace("/loop.html");
}
and loaded it via the BODY onLoad method, you'd be stuck in a
loop and have to kill the browser if using Netscape 3.01 on NT or
Win95.
This seems to be a denial of service attack, and would be
particularly annoying to users without 'advanced' knowledge of
their OS.
SOLUTION
Well, I don't know. I think the end of the world is near so I
don't even wants to know.