“A recently discovered digital certificate bug in Microsoft
Internet Information Server (IIS) causes Netscape Communicator 4.7
browsers to crash while negotiating encryption key lengths with
affected Microsoft servers.”
“… the problem stems from a miscommunication between
Communicator 4.7 and Microsoft’s IIS 4. By default, international
versions of Communicator 4.7 come prepared to accept 56-bit digital
certificates (American companies doing business overseas can use
these certificates). But IIS 4 does not correctly support 56-bit
certificates, so when Communicator tries to step up to the highest
level of security (128-bit key length certificates), it simply
crashes with an invalid page fault in NETSCAPE.EXE. According to
Netscape, the problem rests not with Communicator but instead with
IIS.”
Related Story:
32BitsOnline:
Major Flaw In Secure Web Server Technology Uncovered (Jan 14,
2000)