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Image Handling Flaw Puts Windows At Risk

Posted by Zonk on from the don't-click-there dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has released word that several image handling flaws may open Windows PCs to Spyware or viruses. From the article: 'We will continue to see this type of vulnerabilities in every major application for the foreseeable future ... It is not just images, but any type of complex file format. This is something that security researchers and hackers have realized to be a weak point in many applications.'"

2 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. MSN Messenger felled by this months ago by saskboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Both jpg and png was flawed in Windows, MSN Messenger, and even other image apps by a buffer overflow exploit where a specially crafted jpeg file with a virus "attachment" would crash the program and execute virus code. I have to agree that if they are still finding flaws, we'll be stuck with them for a while. Just imagine, every Windows 98 computer out there probably has this problem too, and there's no way it's going to be really fixed. It will never be safe to run even "safe" things like jpg and mp3 on old computers now. It's very, very disapointing news.

    In a Messenger program that is always accepting new input in the form of pictures and messages, it's especially dangerous because anyone who's online will instantly become a zombie spewing out infection to their friends on their contact list. You really will get viruses through your personal contacts more than spamming-strangers in the future.

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  2. When writing a parser, length checking is a must by Harry+Balls · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When writing a parser (for a graphical or non-graphical data file) it is advisable to sanity check the input data at every step.

    Consider ASN.1 data (used, for instance, for digital certificates, certificate revocation lists, certificate requests and so on).
    Each and every ASN.1 data element and each and every sub-element contains a length field. The ASN.1 parser should check whether the length field of a sub-element goes beyond the length of the enclosing data element, and so on ad infinitum.
    If the parser detects a violation, parsing stops.

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