Symantec Confirms AV Library Flaw, Promises Patch

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday December 22, 2005 @10:35PM from the watching-the-watchmen dept.

the_flyswatter writes "Anti-virus vendor Symantec Corp. has publicly acknowledged that a high-risk buffer overflow vulnerability in its AntiVirus Library could lead to code execution attacks when RAR archive files are scanned. The company confirmed the issue was a buffer overflow in the AntiVirus component used to decompose RAR (Roshal Archive) files. 'A specially crafted RAR file could potentially cause this buffer overflow to occur and execute hostile content from the RAR file,' the advisory read. The bug also affects 15 consumer products, including the widely deployed Symantec Norton AntiVirus, Symantec Norton Internet Security Professional, Norton Personal Firewall and Symantec Norton Internet Security for Macintosh."

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so... by manojar · 2005-12-22 22:43 · Score: 1, Redundant

so, no product is secure enough or free from such bugs!

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Manojar - pronounced like Manager
Inherent problems with AV software by wombatmobile · 2005-12-22 22:45 · Score: 0, Redundant

Windows AV software is inherently problematic because it has to use undocumented, unarchitected means to gain access to the OS to do it job.

This current vulnerability is only the most obvious type of risk with using AV software. More troublesome, and the reason we don't use AV software, is when the AV software itself breaks, the OS can also be affected. And when the AV software is broken and won't uninstall, the only alternative left is to reformat Windows and start again.

No thanks, AV software!