Vulnerability Note VU#116182

WinZip vulnerable to buffer overflow in handling of MIME archive parameters

Overview

A buffer overflow vulnerability in the WinZip program could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system.

I. Description

WinZip Computing, Inc.'s WinZip is a popular utility for creating and extracting a variety of archive file formats on Microsoft Windows-based systems. A buffer overflow error exists in the way that WinZip handles certain parameters of MIME archives.

This error results in a vulnerability when WinZip attempts to interpret invalid data in a MIME-encoded file.

An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by introducing a specially-crafted file to be opened by WinZip, and then coaxing or tricking a user or application into opening it. The malicious file could be introduced in a number of ways including, but not limited to, a remote web page, an email attachment, peer-to-peer file sharing, or network filesystems.

II. Impact

An attacker could execute arbitrary code of their choice on a vulnerable system.

III. Solution

Upgrade to the latest version of the software

WinZip Computing, Inc. has released an updated version of the WinZip software that includes a fix for this vulnerability. Users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to this version of the software. More details can be found in the Systems Affected section of this document.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Updated
WinZip	Vulnerable	27-Feb-2004

References

http://www.winzip.com
http://www.idefense.com/application/poi/display?id=76&type=vulnerabilitiies

Credit

Thanks to iDefense Security Advisory for reporting this vulnerability.

This document was written by Chad R Dougherty based on information provided by iDefense and WinZip

Other Information

Date Public	02/27/2004
Date First Published	03/01/2004 09:56:23 AM
Date Last Updated	03/01/2004
CERT Advisory
CVE Name
Metric	7.70
Document Revision	9

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