Researcher claims to have discovered security flaws in major Media Players
A researcher has claimed that media players can allow malicious code from infecting your computer.
Once your computer is infected with a malicious code it could allow the coder to take full control over your computer, this new type of coding has turned media players into digital weapons.
David Thiel has exposed these flaws on relatively obscure open-source media players during a presentation at the Black Hat hacker conference. He also stated that he has discovered critical flaws in media players provided by renowned brands. He however, refused to give away the names of these brands but has stated that he is disclosing the exploits to the companies so that they can patch these vulnerabilities ASAP.
The potential of these attacks is severe as nobody cares what their system is getting while they play and download MP3s from the internet. These attacks are even more critical than those done via emails as these are launched automatically while you are busy listening to your favorite songs.
Thiel came to the conclusion by testing all major media players with a program called 'Fuzzing', which means corrupting the files used in applications in a controlled manner. This way he was able to derive all the flaws in these media players.
Thiel and some other programmers will continue to expose vulnerabilities during the two-day Black Hat Conference and at the three-day Defcon Convention that commences on Friday.
Via: Physorg
