What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2008-1544

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.1 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 26.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2008-03-28 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-20

Description

The setRequestHeader method of the XMLHttpRequest object in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01, 6, and 7 does not block dangerous HTTP request headers when certain 8-bit character sequences are appended to a header name, which allows remote attackers to (1) conduct HTTP request splitting and HTTP request smuggling attacks via an incorrect Content-Length header, (2) access arbitrary virtual hosts via a modified Host header, (3) bypass referrer restrictions via an incorrect Referer header, and (4) bypass the same-origin policy and obtain sensitive information via a crafted request header.

Affected products

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 11: 5.01-sp4, 6-sp1, 6, 7

References

• http://marc.info/?l=bugtraq&m=121380194923597&w=2
• http://secunia.com/advisories/29453
• http://securityreason.com/securityalert/3785
• http://www.mindedsecurity.com/MSA02240108.html
• http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/489954/100/0/threaded
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/28379
• http://www.securitytracker.com/id?1020226
• http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA08-162B.html
• http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2008/0980
• http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2008/1778
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securitybulletins/2008/ms08-031
• https://oval.cisecurity.org/repository/search/definition/oval%3Aorg.mitre.oval%3Adef%3A5291

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