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Subject: [ISN] QuickTime, not Safari, to blame for MacBook vuln
From: InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews ! org>
Date: 2007-04-25 9:44:44
Message-ID: Pine.LNX.4.61.0704250444350.31291 () conundrum ! infosecnews ! org
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/25/quicktime_vuln_fells_mac/
By Dan Goodin in San Francisco
25th April 2007
Updated -- The zero-day vulnerability that allowed a hacker to
commandeer a brand new MacBook Pro late last week resides in a flaw in
Apple's QuickTime media player, the exploit's author says. The
revelation corrects descriptions given last Friday that the exploit
targeted Safari.
Dino Dai Zovi set the record straight in a blog posting yesterday. It
adds that Mac users browsing with Firefox are also vulnerable if
QuickTime is installed and that QuickTime may put Java-enabled browsers
on Windows machines at risk as well. Several hours after this story was
first published, a new entry appeared that said unnamed sources at 3com
have determined the QuickTime flaw is also exploitable on Internet
Explorer versions 6 and 7.
Secunia has rated the QuickTime flaw highly critical, its second highest
rating. "This can be exploited to execute arbitrary code when a user
visits a malicious web site," the site warned. It recommends users
disable Java as a work around until Apple releases a patch.
On Friday, Shane Macaulay, a friend of Dai Zovi's who participated in a
"pwn-2-own" contest at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, described
the flaw as residing in Safari. Dai Zovi, who wrote the exploit but
didn't actually attend the conference, said on Tuesday that the
vulnerability in fact lies in the way QuickTime handles Java. The
exploit required a machine visit a booby-trapped website in order to
work. Dai Zovi spent about nine hours writing the exploit, which allows
a hacker to remotely gain full user rights to the targeted machine.
Under the contest rules, a successful exploit entitled the author to go
home with the hacked machine. It also nets him a $10,000 bounty from
security provider Tipping Point pending confirmation of the finding.
Dai Zovi on Tuesday declined to discuss the QuickTime in detail other
than to say it allows a client-side Java error to execute arbitrary code
when a Java-enabled browser visits a malicious website.
Dai Zovi's handiwork is only the latest discovery of a QuickTime
vulnerability. Last month, Apple issued an update that plugged eight
holes in the popular media playback software.
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