Malware Detection Bypass in Sophos Anti-Virus via Internet Explorer

CVE-2008-5541

What is CVE-2008-5541?

A security flaw in Sophos Anti-Virus version 4.33.0 allows remote attackers to avoid detection of malware embedded in HTML documents when using Internet Explorer 6 or 7. By inserting an MZ header at the beginning of the document and altering the file extension to either none, .txt, or .jpg, malicious code can exploit this vulnerability. This could potentially expose users to various security threats, as the antivirus software fails to identify the malicious intent of the web page.

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