Here is another reason to dislike ActiveX controls in all their glory. The Ask Toolbar has a remotely exploitable buffer overflow. Currently there is no fix and there is an exploit available on milw0rm.
Description:
Joey Mengele has discovered a vulnerability in Ask Toolbar, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user’s system.The vulnerability is caused due to a boundary error in the AskJeevesToolBar.SettingsPlugin.1 ActiveX control (askBar.dll) when handling the “ShortFormat” property. This can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow by assigning an overly long (greater than 500 bytes) string to the affected property.
Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code.
The vulnerability is confirmed in version 4.0.2. Other versions may also be affected.
Tags: Ask Toolbar Exploit, Ask Toolbar Buffer Overflow, Ask Toolbar Vulnerability
