An "extremely critical" security vulnerability has been discovered in AOL's Winamp digital media player, relating to the way the software handles filenames that include a computer name. An exploit has already surfaced for the flaw, which affects version 5 of the software.
Winamp developers hve already released version 5.13 of the software, which plugs the security hole.
According to an advisory by Secunia, the vulnerability "can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow via a specially crafted playlist containing a filename starting with an overly long computer name." A successful attack can lead to arbitrary code being run on a user's computer.
The problem was first reported alongside the exploit created by ATmaCA, and utilizes a specially crafted playlist file to overflow Winamp. The PLS file can simply be loaded remotely through an IFRAME on a Web site.
This isn't the first critical vulnerability to hit AOL's popular player. Last July, a bug was discovered in Winamp's handling of ID3v2 tags. That issue also involved a buffer overflow that could have led to a remote system compromise, but it required some user interaction.
Winamp download page:
winamp.com.]
Story source:
betanews.com.
