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NULL Pointer Exploit Excites Researchers
Da Massive writes "Mark Dowd's paper "Application-Specific Attacks: Leveraging the ActionScript Virtual Machine" has alarmed researchers. It points out techniques that promise to open up a class of exploits and vulnerability research previously thought to be prohibitively difficult. Already, the small but growing group of Information Security experts who have had the chance to read and digest the contents of the paper are expressing an excited concern depending on how they are interpreting it. While the Flash vulnerability described in the paper[PDF] has been patched by Adobe, the presentation of a reliable exploit for NULL pointer dereferencing has the researchers who have read the paper fascinated. Thomas Ptacek has an explanation of Dowd's work, and Nathan McFeters at ZDNet is 'stunned by the technical details.'"
So you CAN get something from nothing!
Summation 2
NULL to see here, move along to 0x80000001 please...
Dude. You are wise beyond your years. I hereby dub thee: the sensei of security.
This is more like a cat up a tree armed with a sniper rifle, picking off any emergency service personnel that get too close while his buddies rob a bank.
which is totally what she said
You don't have to come across this exploit for your browser to crash in Vista, normal browsing does that just fine.
...you'll need a pointer first.
What's ironic is that this exploit DOESN'T crash the browser! That's the whole ever-fuckin point.
...oh, hell...nevermind
A browser crash is what's SUPPOSED to happen here to prevent the exploit from deploying its payload. I mean, in this case, a crash is the DESIRED behavior. An uncaught exception should be thrown.
So... just walk with me here... maybe Windows isn't just unreliable and unstable. MAYBE it's the most secure application stack ever devised.