Black On Stuff

Time passed since the first release of Internet Explorer and version by version new features were added. While I’m writing this article, the latest version is 8.0 but still, after all these years, Microsoft did not manage to find the right way to parse an URL and extract the file name. Ordinary bugs keep showing in each version and you must find ways to make your application work in all “major” browsers. Here’s a very annoying one that keeps popping up from time to time.

The task is simple: you just need to make a link to an exe file with some parameters. The parameters are required, otherwise the download would not work.

Here is a link: http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/C/0/CC0BD555-33DD-411E-936B-73AC6F95AE11/IE8-WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe?param=black

I’m just trying to pass the parameter param with the value black to the .exe link. The result (click on the above link in your already installed Internet Explorer browser):

Magically, the extension is gone. Why is that? Because there’s no such extension as .exe?param=black. This is invalid, right? Or Microsoft thinks that.

Let’s try another one, with just a slight change:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/C/0/CC0BD555-33DD-411E-936B-73AC6F95AE11/IE8-WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe?param=.rar

The result is breathtaking , I’m able to download the file with a different extension than the one served by the server:

Is this a bird? Is this a plane? No, it’s the newly improved Internet Explorer 8. Now with tabs and new security holes. No more comments.