The issue concerns the URL parser in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.1, allowing remote attackers to execute arbitrary code. This is achieved through multiple requests to ".dll" followed by specific arguments, such as `~0` through `~9`, which causes ntdll.dll to produce a return value that IIS does not handle correctly. An example of such a request is "/ vti bin/.dll/*/~0". Initially, it was believed that the consequence of this issue would only be a denial of service, resulting in an application crash and reboot.