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."

Comments

Where are the Cherubs?

[Speare]

I think I heard of this method of attack in a security book I read once. Where the image of an avatar's identification turned out to be a computer-infecting virus. Oh, wait, it was a novel. "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson.

once upon a time...

[ultramk]

a friend of mine used to work for MS on a version of IE... one bug they were trying to track down involved jpg (or was it gif) images of a certain--very large--dimension that could in some circumstances cause boot-block overwrite on the boot drive as it was being cached... (this was a few years back...)

when this bug was being discussed in a meeting, the first thing that was said was something to the effect of "oh, and if you tell anybody--anybody--about this, you might as well look for a new job at the same time, and a good lawyer."

of course, this was a few years ago, and from what i understand it was fixed right away, but still...

m-