CVE-2008-5553: Microsoft Internet Explorer

Medium severity, CVSS 4.3. EPSS: 11.6% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

The XSS Filter in Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta 2 disables itself upon encountering a certain X-XSS-Protection HTTP header, which allows remote attackers to bypass the XSS protection mechanism and conduct XSS attacks by injecting this header after a CRLF sequence. NOTE: the vendor has reportedly stated that the XSS Filter intentionally does not attempt to "address every conceivable XSS attack scenario."

Affected products

• Microsoft Internet Explorer: version 8 only

Published 2008-12-12. Last modified 2026-06-16.