Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-026

Buffer Overrun In RPC Interface Could Allow Code Execution

• Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0
• Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Services Edition
• Microsoft Windows 2000
• Microsoft Windows XP
• Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003

Not Affected Software:

• Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition

What’s the scope of the vulnerability?

This is a buffer overrun vulnerability. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain complete control over a remote computer. This would give the attacker the ability to take any action on the server that they want. For example, and attacker could change Web pages, reformat the hard disk, or add new users to the local administrators group.

To carry out such an attack, an attacker would require the ability to send a malformed message to the RPC service and thereby cause the target machine to fail in such a way that arbitrary code could be executed.