Summary An attempt has been made to exploit the Microsoft Index Server in order to grab unauthorized files from the system. Details Microsoft Index Server 2.0 is a subsystem that comes with IIS 4.0. It provides a standard search engine for the server, indexing the content on the server and providing search capabilities for users.
Hackers can use the common directory traversal technique in order to access any file on the system.
Defense Install the patch provided by Microsoft. It is likely that similar problems will be found in the future, in either this product or others. A defense against this class of attack is to rename directories. In order to exploit this bug, hackers must know the exact name of the file they want to retrieve. Changing directory names means they cannot easily find well-known files.