Vulnerability Note VU#116182

WinZip vulnerable to buffer overflow in handling of MIME archive parameters

Original Release date: 01 Mar 2004 | Last revised: 01 Mar 2004

Overview

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

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.

Impact

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

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 (Learn More)

VendorStatusDate NotifiedDate Updated
WinZipAffected-27 Feb 2004
If you are a vendor and your product is affected, let us know.

CVSS Metrics (Learn More)

Group Score Vector
Base N/A N/A
Temporal N/A N/A
Environmental N/A N/A

References

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

  • CVE IDs: Unknown
  • Date Public: 27 Feb 2004
  • Date First Published: 01 Mar 2004
  • Date Last Updated: 01 Mar 2004
  • Severity Metric: 7.70
  • Document Revision: 9

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