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VLC Media Player format string vulnerability

Vulnerability Note VU#200928

Original Release Date: 2007-07-23 | Last Revised: 2007-07-24

Overview

VLC contains a format string vulnerability that may allow an attacker to execute code.

Description

VideoLAN (VLC) is a streaming media player that runs on multiple platforms.

From VideoLAN Security Advisory 0702:

VLC media player Ogg/Vorbis, Ogg/Theora, CDDA (CD Digital Audio) and SAP (Service Announce Protocol) plugins are prone to a C-style format string vulnerability when trying to parse a media data stream.

Valid but carefully crafted .ogg (Vorbis) or .ogm (Theora) files, CDDB entries or SAP/SDP messages can trigger the bug. We therefore consider this bug to have a high severity.

Note that VLC distributes a plugin for Mozilla-based browsers. If the VLC browser plugin is used, an attacker may be able to exploit this vulnerability by convincing a user to go to a webpage.

Impact

A remote, unauthenticated attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running VLC.

Solution


Upgrade
VLC media player 0.8.6c has been released to address this issue.

Disable the affected components

Disabling the affected VLC plugins and components may mitigate this vulnerability. See the workarounds section of VideoLAN Security Advisory 0702 for more details.

Vendor Information

200928
 
Expand all

VideoLAN Affected

Updated:  July 23, 2007

Status

Affected

Vendor Statement

We have not received a statement from the vendor.

Vendor Information

The vendor has not provided us with any further information regarding this vulnerability.

Addendum

See http://www.videolan.org/sa0702.html for more details.

If you have feedback, comments, or additional information about this vulnerability, please send us email.


CVSS Metrics

Group Score Vector
Base
Temporal
Environmental

References

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the VLC team for information that was used in this report.

This document was written by Ryan Giobbi.

Other Information

CVE IDs: CVE-2007-3316
Severity Metric: 8.82
Date Public: 2007-06-20
Date First Published: 2007-07-23
Date Last Updated: 2007-07-24 16:50 UTC
Document Revision: 14

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