Beware! Playing Untrusted Videos On VLC Player Could Hack Your Computer.

If you use VLC media player on your computer and haven't updated it recently, don't you even dare to play any untrusted, randomly downloaded video file on it.

Doing so could allow hackers to remotely take full control over your computer system.

That's because VLC media player software versions prior to 3.0.7 contain two high-risk security vulnerabilities, besides many other medium- and low-severity security flaws, that could potentially lead to arbitrary code execution attacks.

With more than 3 billion downloads, VLC is a hugely popular open-source media player software that is currently being used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide on all major platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, as well as Android and iOS mobile platforms.

Discovered by Symeon Paraschoudis from Pen Test Partners and identified as CVE-2019-12874, the first high-severity vulnerability is a double-free issue which resides in "zlib_decompress_extra" function of VideoLAN VLC player and gets triggered when it parses a malformed MKV file type within the Matroska demuxer.

The second high-risk flaw, identified as CVE-2019-5439 and discovered by another researcher, is a read-buffer overflow issue that resides in "ReadFrame" function and can be triggered using a malformed AVI video file.

vlc media player vulnerabilities

Though the proof-of-concepts demonstrated by both researchers cause a crash, a potential attacker can exploit these vulnerabilities to achieve arbitrary code execution with the same privileges as of the target user on the system.

All the attacker needs to do is craft a malicious MKV or AVI video file and trick users into playing it using the vulnerable versions of VLC.

Well, that's not a tough job, as attackers can easily target hundreds of thousands of users within hours by simply releasing malicious video files on torrent sites, mimicking as a pirated copy of a newly released movie or TV series.

According to an advisory released by VideoLAN, having ASLR and DEP protections enabled on the system could help users mitigate the threat, but developers did admit that these protections could be bypassed too.

Paraschoudis used honggfuzz fuzzing tool to discover this issue and four other bugs, which were also patched by the VideoLAN team earlier this month along with 28 other bugs reported by other security researchers through EU-FOSSA bug bounty program.

Users are highly recommended to update their media player software to VLC 3.0.7 or later versions and should avoid opening or playing video files from untrusted third parties.

Comments

UGANDA ELECTORAL COMMISSION TO ELIMINATE NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION CARDS (IDs) FOR 2021 GENERAL ELECTIONS.

The elimination of using National IDs (Ndagamuntu) for the 2021 elections should not have come as a surprise. One would be very NAIVE to think that Bobi Wine has not prepared for this in his Business Plan under the RISK section. It is public knowledge that our EC is not independent. It is also public knowledge that Military Dictator Yoweri Museveni will never lose an election. What stunned us this morning is when we noticed that on social media, people were mocking Bobi with his "get your Ndagamuntu". We are on record for saying to all Our readers that the National ID is like Apartheid in South Africa. Students of History would know how those IDs were being used to arrest people, deny them jobs, deny them basic services. Consequently, Bobi was not wrong and will never be wrong on the Ndagamuntu. Except the ones attacking him and mocking him forget that in Uganda, now, no National ID (Ndagamuntu), no service. If you have not been denied registering your child i...

President Museveni Praises Soldiers for Torturing Bobi Wine in Arua on August 2018.

President Museveni at the passout of police officers in Masindi Friday https://www.facebook.com/1829407613953796 President Museveni has praised his Special Forces Command [SFC] guards for properly and legally beating National Unity Platform [NUP] presidential flagbearer, Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine. “The other day, there was a fracas in West Nile where our young friend Bobi Wine was fighting security people,” Museveni said Friday while passing out police recruits at Kabalye Training School in Masindi district. “I think they beat him a bit and then they came and said a Member of Parliament has been beaten. I said let me study and see how he was beaten. I found the man had been beaten in the right way,” Museveni explained. “This was because…I think this was SFC people who are not police-minded. They are used to doing other things. But somehow they managed to act properly, I was surprised.” When they [SFC] went where this young man was in the room, he had ca...

Here is Why Our Utterances For Praying Jesus And God To Come Liberate Ugandans, May Be Misplaced. This Phrase is like inform of a Letter To Some Categorized Section Of Ugandans.

https://m.facebook.com/yusufosuta/photos/a.1896701010557789/2070383359856219/?type=3 OPEN LETTER TO NRM SUPPORTERS - NATIONAL ROBBERS MOVEMENT. .................................................................................. Last week of March, a friend told me to pray for Uganda. I told him that he was an Idiot and we have prayed for too long and we are still hungry and sick and Jesus is not coming soon to liberate us. He then ignored the STUPID and sent me a picture we all now know. It got me totally messed up. This guy was telling me to pray then sends a picture of men bowing down in blood. He might have meant guns but I blocked him because his utterances of praying for Uganda were misplaced. I unblocked him 3 weeks later and asked him about praying and assassinations. His reply "eithrr prayers or guns or both". I hate violence with a passion. So he is now blocked in like FOREVER. Do you feel safe? Do not feel safe. Uganda regim...

Osuta Yusuf

Search This Blog