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Zero-Day Vulnerability Discovered In FFmpeg Lets Attackers Steal Files Remotely

Posted by timothy on from the which-point-in-the-stack dept.

prisoninmate writes: A zero-day vulnerability in the FFmpeg open-source multimedia framework, which is currently used in numerous Linux kernel-based operating systems and software applications, also for the Mac OS X and Windows platforms, has been discovered recently by Russian programmer Maxim Andreev in the current stable builds of the software. It appears to let anyone with the necessary skills hack a computer to read local files on a remote machine and send them over the network using a specially crafted video file. Arch Linux devs already rebuilt their FFmpeg packages without the AppleHTTP and HLS demuxers.

4 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. Very wide impact. by Anonymous+Psychopath · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ffmpeg is used in some capacity in just about every video application I can think of. VLC, Kodi/XBMC, MythTV, Handbrake, Plex...

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    Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

    1. Re:Very wide impact. by dissy · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think I'm going to remove the package until a new, fixed version comes out, or at least detailed information on how to migrate the vulnerability until a fix comes along.

      The article suggests a mitigation, however it sounds like it may just be easier to remove the package until your upstream provides updates...

      James Darnley of FFmpeg suggests that disabling HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) while building the package should do the trick until a fix is committed.
      It is also possible to fix the issue by rebuilding the FFmpeg packages without network support, using the --disable-network configure flag, but that seems a bit too much.

      A commenter in the arch bug report listing also says:

      Btw, one could also do --disable-demuxer='hls,applehttp', but rebuilding without network support looks like a more robust solution for now (until the issue is inspected and fixed upstream).

      https://bugs.archlinux.org/tas...

      My understanding is the specific bug reported in russian is exploited via HLS, however it is unconfirmed if the same method could be used and exploited in other network stream demuxers yet.

    2. Re:Very wide impact. by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Any video file that you torrent could now open you up for risk. That means about 99% of Kodi users.

  2. Re:Now this. This is news! by Anonymous+Psychopath · · Score: 3, Informative

    Whelp another good reason to have a decent firewall.

    Once you put a malformed video file on a system with a vulnerable ffmpeg, and ffmpeg is used to access the file, it makes an outbound connection. Most firewalls are configured to happily pass along anything originated from the inside network.

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    Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.