An address bar spoof can be conducted by a malicious phisher taking advantage of a race condition in Internet Explorer.
The Secunia security advisory website advised IE users of a moderately critical vulnerability in the browser. Secunia created a test that can show if the user's browser is vulnerable.
IE 6 on fully patched Windows XP SP1/SP2 machines, and the IE 7 Beta 2 preview (March edition) demonstrate this vulnerability. In my testing, the vulnerability was present on IE 6, but not in Firefox 1.5 or Opera 9 TP2.
Like a previously reported critical issue about IE, Secunia noted that users can disable Active Scripting in the browser until Microsoft releases a patch. Secunia provided more details and a link to the test demonstrating the vulnerability:
The vulnerability is caused due to a race condition in the loading of web content and Macromedia Flash Format files (".swf") in browser windows. This can be exploited to spoof the address bar in a browser window showing web content from a malicious web site.
Secunia has constructed a test, which can be used to check if your browser is affected by this issue:
http://secunia.com/Internet_Explorer_Address_Bar_Spoofing_Vulnerability_Test/
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