'Month of bugs' exploit

A security analyst who elected to kick off the new year with one month of Apple bugs has published the first flaw -- which resides in Apple's QuickTime software. A new post states that a vulnerability in the QuickTime rstp URL handler could allow malicious users to remotely execute code via a stack-based buffer overflow. "By supplying a specially crafted string, an attacker could overflow a stack-based buffer, using either HTML, Javascript or a QTL file as attack vector, leading to an exploitable remote arbitrary code execution condition," the anonymous security expert wrote. The example exploit, which requires a working Ruby interpreter, creates a QTL file that users can open locally or that is served remotely via a Web server. The poster notes that while the sample exploit itself is trivial in nature, the code could easily be modified to use shell code. The author also notes that the only known workaround for Mac users is to disable the rtsp:// URL handler or uninstall QuickTime entirely.

by MacNN Staff