Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 310156 contains the following summary:
This article describes how to limit the header size of the
HTTP transmission that Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) will
accept from a client. Recent exploits perpetrated against Microsoft Internet
Information Server 4.0 and IIS 5.0 depend on the ability to send large amounts
of data in the HTTP application-layer header. Examples of such exploits include
the Code Red versions I and II worms. The abnormally large amount of
information that is contained in the application-layer header may cause a
buffer overflow and could potentially compromise the server.
Internet
Information Server 4.0 and IIS 5.0 support a method to control the maximum size
of the request line and header fields that are accepted by the Internet
Information Server and IIS World Wide Web service.
The
MaxClientRequestBuffer registry entry is used to limit the amount of data that
is accepted in the Internet Information Server and IIS request buffer. This
data includes all the information from the first byte of the request through
the last byte before the body of the request. This includes the method, the
URL, additional path information, the query string, the HTTP version, and all
headers and characters that delimit all portions of the request.
The
default client request buffer size for Internet Information Server 4.0 is 2
megabytes (MB). The default client request buffer for IIS 5.0 is 128 kilobytes
(KB). The default client request buffer for IIS 5.0 Service Pack 4 (SP4) is 16
KB. IIS request buffer size may become the limiting factor for Kerberos
authentication with large tokens if users are members of many groups. If
a user does have a token that is too large for the IIS server, the client will receive the following in the client's Web browser:
