IE and Outlook run malicious commands without scripting: “An attacker can run arbitrary commands on Windows machines with a simple bit of HTML, an Israeli security researcher has demonstrated. The exploit will work with IE, Outlook and OutlooK Express even if active scripting and ActiveX are disabled in the browser security settings.

The problem here is data binding, an old ‘feature’ going back to IE4 in which a data source object (DSO) is bound to HTML.” The Register US