Title: Windows Media Player .ASX Buffer Overflow Vulnerability
Severity: HIGH
Description:
Windows Media Player is an application used for digital audio, and video content viewing. An unsafe buffer copy involving remotely-obtained data exists in the Active Stream Redirector (ASX) component in Windows Media Player.
The ASX enables a user to play streaming media residing on an intranet or external site. .ASX files are metafiles that redirect streaming media content from a browser to Windows Media Player.
One of the tags in .ASX files is '<banner>'. When ASX files are being interpreted by Windows Media Player, the value of the 'HREF' attribute in the <banner> tag is copied into a local variable for run-time use. This copy is performed without bounds checking; it is not ensured that the amount of data copied is within the predefined size limits. As a result, any extraneous data will be copied over neighbouring memory on the program's stack. If a critical value such as a function return address is replaced by an attacker, this vulnerability can be exploited to execute arbitrary code on the victim host.
Windows Media Player runs in the security context of the user logged into the system. Any code that is executed will run with these privileges. On single user systems such as Windows 98, this vulnerability may compromise the entire host.
Note: This vulnerability may be related to Bugtraq ID: 1980. See the references section.
Affected Products:
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
- Microsoft Windows 95
- Microsoft Windows 98
- Microsoft Windows ME
- Microsoft Windows Media Player 6.3
- Microsoft Windows Media Player 6.4
- Microsoft Windows Media Player 7.0
- Microsoft Windows NT 4.0
References:
- Microsoft: Windows Media Player Product Homepage
- SecurityFocus: Bugtraq ID: 1980 - Microsoft Windows Media Player .ASX Buffer Overflow Vulnerabi
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