Internet Explorer's cross-frame vulnerability (NavigateAndFind)
28 Dec. 1999
Summary
Internet Explorer 5.01 under Windows 95, Internet Explorer 5.0 under WinNT 4.0 (earlier versions are probably vulnerable as well) and Internet Explorer 5.0 under Windows 2000 allows circumventing of the "Cross frame security policy" by using the function external.NavigateAndFind(). This exposes the target, and allows reading of local files, getting cookies (which is dangerous because you can capture passwords, etc.) and other sensitive information. This vulnerability may be exploited using an HTML email message or a newsgroup posting.
The function window.external.NavigateAndFind() is used to search for strings in specified URLs displaying the result in a specified frame. The problem is it allows searching in "javascript:" URLs in a specified frame.
In this case the code in the "javascript:" URL is executed in the security context of the target frame and the code has access to the document loaded in the target frame.
Examine the code below for more information.