DominoSecurity Newsletter
(from DominoSecurity.org)


Date: 07/01/2004

Title: Two recent vulnerabilities -- cross-site scripting and notes URLs

Contents:

Hello DominoSecurity readers,

Sometimes I wish Domino were attacked as often as Windows, then I would have more to write about. (Joking -- I don't really wish for this.) There are two recent issues that have come up however. Below is a link to the SearchDomino article about them, which I contributed to. Be sure to notice
the "additional info" box on the left, the third link points to the original information.

searchdomino.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid4_gci990132,00.html

- The first item (cross-site scripting) is reported in a vague way, and it does not appear that it was ever exploited.

- The second item is described in more detail, and relates to a registry setting that allows someone to construct browser URLs of the format "notes:<arguments>". With this registry setup, the browser will launch the Notes client software for these URLs. This is a known and supported feature. However, a clever attacker can use this feature to point Notes toward a bogus INI file, which points to a bogus Notes data directory, which contains malicious DLLs. I believe this was a true vulnerability, with potentially serious consequences. But my comment to SearchDomino was "attackers would really have to know what they're doing in order to exploit it" -- which sums up my thoughts pretty well.

If you have any questions about these issues, or any others, feel free to contact me directly.

Chuck Connell
781-939-0505 (office)
connell@chc-3.com -- email
www.chc-3.com -- My home page
www.DominoAdministration.com -- Outsourced administration services for Domino and Notes
www.DominoSecurity.org -- The best source for security information about Domino and Notes

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