A vulnerability has been identified in Internet Explorer, which can be exploited by malicious people to display a fake URL in the address and status bars.
The vulnerability is caused due to an input validation error, which can be exploited by including the "%01" and "%00" URL encoded representations after the username and right before the "@" character in an URL.
Successful exploitation allows a malicious person to display an arbitrary FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) in the address and status bars, which is different from the actual location of the page.
This can be exploited to trick users into divulging sensitive information or download and execute malware on their systems, because they trust the faked domain in the two bars.
Example displaying only "http://www.trusted_site.com" in the two bars when the real domain is "malicious_site.com":
http://www.trusted_site.com%01%00@malicious_site.com/malicious.html
Test to see if your browser is vulnerable to the "Internet Explorer URL Spoofing Vulnerability".
Click this link to see if you are vulnerable:
Go here to perform the test 'http://www.microsoft.com%00@secunia.com/internet_explorer_address_bar_spoofing_test/'
After you have clicked the link:
If your address bar only says "http://www.microsoft.com" then your browser is vulnerable.
Also, notice that your status bar (lower left corner of IE) only displays "http://www.microsoft.com" when holding the mouse cursor over the link.