Security Advisory 0901

Summary           : Stack overflow in MPA, AVI and ASF demuxer
Date              : September 2009
Affected versions : VLC media player 1.0.1 down to 0.5.0
ID                : VideoLAN-SA-0901
CVE reference     : Pending

Details

When parsing a MP4, ASF or AVI file with an overly deep box structure, a stack overflow might occur. It would overwrite the return address and thus redirect the execution flow.

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 MP4, AVI and ASF demuxer plugins (libmp4_plugin.*, libavi_plugin.*, libasf_plugin.*) can be removed manually from the VLC plugin installation directory.

Solution

VLC media player 1.0.2 addresses this issue. Patches for older versions are available from the official VLC source code repository 1.0-bugfix branch.

Credits

This vulnerability was reported by Sebastian Apelt, siberas.

References

The VideoLAN project: http://www.videolan.org/
VLC official GIT repository: http://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git

History

14 September 2009: Vendor notification.
15 September 2009: Internal patches for VLC development version and 0.9-bugfix tree.
19 September 2009: Initial security advisory.
20 September 2009: VLC media player 1.0.2 released.

Christophe Mutricy,
on behalf of the VideoLAN project