Security Advisory 0809

Summary           : Buffer overflow in VLC TiVo demuxer
Date              : October 2008
Affected versions : VLC media player 0.9.4 down to 0.9.0
ID                : VideoLAN-SA-0809
CVE reference     : CVE-2008-4654, CVE-2008-4686

Details

When parsing the header of an invalid TY file, a stack-based buffer overflow might occur.

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 TY demux plugin (libty_plugin.*) can be removed manually from the VLC plugin installation directory. This will prevent opening of TiVo files.

Solution

VLC media player 0.9.5 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

18 October 2008

Vendor notification.

Patch for VLC development version and 0.9-bugfix tree.

Initial security advisory.

24 October 2008

VLC media player 0.9.5 released.