Security Advisory 0811

Summary           : Buffer overflow in Real demuxer
Date              : November 2008
Affected versions : VLC media player 0.9.8 down to 0.9.0
ID                : VideoLAN-SA-0811
CVE reference     : CVE-2008-5276

Details

When parsing the header of an invalid Real Media file an integer overflow might occur then trigger a heap-based buffer overflows.

Impact

If successful, a malicious third party could trigger execution of arbitrary code within the context of the VLC media player.

Threat mitigation

Exploitation of this issue requires the user to explicitly open a specially crafted file.

Workarounds

The user should refrain from opening files from untrusted third parties or accessing untrusted remote sites (or disable the VLC browser plugins), until the patch is applied.

Alternatively, the Real demuxer plugin (libreal_plugin.*) can be removed manually from the VLC plugin installation directory.

Solution

VLC media player 0.9.8a addresses this issue. Patches for older versions are available from the official VLC source code repository 0.9-bugfix branch.

Credits

This vulnerability was reported by Tobias Klein.

References

The VideoLAN project: http://www.videolan.org/
VLC official GIT repository: http://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git
Tobias Klein: http://www.trapkit.de/advisories/

History

14 November 2008: Vendor notification.
17 November 2008: Internal patches for VLC development version and 0.9-bugfix tree.
28 November 2008: CVE reserved
30 November 2008: Initial security advisory.
03 December 2008: VLC media player 0.9.8a released.

Rémi Denis-Courmont,
on behalf of the VideoLAN project