Internet Information ServerApplication · Microsoft

CVE-2000-1104

HIGH · 7.5 CVSS v2.0 Published 2001-01-09
Mitigation only
No fix yet — a mitigation exists. There is no fixed release. A documented workaround reduces exposure in the meantime.
See remediation →
84/100
Remediation priority · High
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
Variant of the "IIS Cross-Site Scripting" vulnerability as originally discussed in MS:MS00-060 (CVE-2000-0746) allows a malicious web site operator to embed scripts in a link to a trusted site, which are returned without quoting in an error message back to the client. The client then executes those scripts in the same context as the trusted site.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis · high confidence

This is a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in Microsoft IIS where malicious scripts embedded in URLs to a trusted IIS site are returned unquoted in error messages, causing the browser to execute the injected scripts in the context of the trusted site.

MitigationApply Microsoft security patches for IIS to address input validation flaws, or upgrade to a patched IIS version. Implement output encoding for all user-supplied data returned in HTTP responses.

Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.

Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.

NVD · CPE data
Internet Information ServerApplication
Affected:= 4.0
Internet Information ServicesApplication
Affected:= 5.0

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Authentication
None
Confidentiality
Partial
Integrity
Partial
Availability
Partial

AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.

dbcve checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Confirm IIS is running
    Check for inetinfo.exe or iisadmin service in Task Manager, or run 'net start' and look for 'Internet Information Services'
    Affected if IIS is installed and running
  2. Determine IIS version
    Run 'inetmgr' and check About Internet Information Services, or check HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\InetStp in the registry for the VersionString value
    Affected if Version is 4.0 or 5.0 specifically
  3. Verify custom error handling is enabled
    In IIS Manager, right-click the website > Properties > Custom Errors tab, confirm the default error mappings are present for 404 and other error codes
    Affected if Custom errors are enabled (default configuration)
  4. Test for unencoded error reflection
    Browse to a non-existent page on the IIS server with a URL like http://target/<script>alert('xss')</script> and examine the resulting error page HTML source
    Affected if The script tags from the URL appear literally in the error response HTML without being encoded to &lt;script&gt;

If running IIS version 4.0 or 5.0 and error messages reflect URL content without HTML-encoding special characters, the environment is affected by this XSS vulnerability.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

From vendor data
Mitigation available No clean upgrade yet — mitigate in the meantime
Mitigation

Apply Microsoft security patches for IIS to address input validation flaws, or upgrade to a patched IIS version. Implement output encoding for all user-supplied data returned in HTTP responses.

Fix this in Internet Information Server Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation2.0 h
  • Implementation1.0 h
  • Testing2.0 h
5.0 hours of engineering $880
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Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

Check whether your project pulls in CVE-2000-1104 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.

References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2000-1104 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.

What belongs here
  • Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
  • Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
  • No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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