RealNetworks danger warning
p2pnet.net News:- Almost exactly a year ago corporate music service owner RealNetworks said it had fixed major security holes in its media player software.
The announcement followed earlier news that some of its players had "security vulnerabilities" that could "potentially allow an attacker to run arbitrary code on a user’s machine".
Then on March 3 this year p2pnet reported, "RealNetworks has had to build new versions of its RealPlayer to combat what Secunia describes as Highly Critical security flaws which can be exploited by hackers looking to compromise users’ systems.”
Now the company is again saying users are seriously at serious risk because of new security flaws in RealPlayer 10 and 10.5, RealOne Player versions 1 and 2, RealPlayer 8 and RealPlayer Enterprise.which could allow a hacker to:
Exploit 1: Fashion a malicious MP3 file to allow the overwriting of a local file or execution of an ActiveX control on a customer’s machine.
Exploit 2: Fashion a malicious RealMedia file which uses RealText to cause a heap overflow to allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on a customer’s machine.
Exploit 3: Fashion a malicious AVI file to cause a buffer overflow to allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on a customer’s machine.
Exploit 4: And using default settings of earlier Internet Explorer browsers, a malicious website could cause a local HTML file to be created and then trigger an RM file to play which would then reference this local HTML file.
Go the the company’s site here for more details, together with links to patch downloads and instructions.
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
a year ago – Security flaws fixed: Real, p2pnet, June 11, 2004
earlier news – RealPlayer security holes, p2pnet, February 7, 2004
build new versions – Highly critical RealPlayer flaws, p2pnet, March 3, 2005






June 24th, 2005 at 2:01 am
I guess we’re pretty safe from any problems. Who uses realplayer to play .avi or .mp3 files?
June 24th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
“Who uses realplayer to play .avi or .mp3 files?” LoL
July 3rd, 2005 at 4:17 pm
it should be made clear that these flaws only apply to stupid M$ windows based systems.