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Image Causes Exploitable Overflow in Microsoft Products
Em Adespoton writes "Core Security researchers discovered that by electing a specially-crafted graphic as the user's display picture in MSN Messenger, an attacker could trigger a buffer overflow vulnerability on the chat partner's computer. Through this, it is possible to covertly take over machines running instant messaging software. Windows Messenger and Windows Media Player are also affected by this vulnerability. The story is also available at Newsfactor.com and SearchSecurity.com."
Is this one at all related to the previous image library flaws (the vulnerability for which the GDI detection tool was released to identify any Windows apps that were affected)?
Oh, wait, I think I found it! A patch was released for PNG processing flaws on Tuesday this week; among the affected software: Microsoft MSN Messenger.
They've said that PNG stands for "Proprietary Network Graphics". In fact, this is very wrong - it's not proprietary at all. The idea of the format is that it _ISN'T_ proprietary - it's free as in speech, free as in beer, free as in patents.
PNG really stands for Portable Network Graphics. And I hope that people don't get confused and start blaming the PNG file format for a bug that is MS's fault.
Perhaps one should take note that this overflow bug is not in MS code, but in the open-source LibPNG, which MS used.
And it's also included in most Linux distros.
If MS is to blame, it's for their lousy reaction speed. This vunerability has been known for months.
.....is already out.
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You have to manually call the uninstall section of the msn messenger INF file.. ive done it so many times i type it from memory..
go to start>run, and typemake sure msn messenger is closed first so it wont error when it unregisters the dll files
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