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08 February 2005

Malicious Pictures Attack Thwarted Before The Act

BitDefender has released an update yesterday which will allow BitDefender antivirus engines to detect malware that attempts to use the vulnerability detailed in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS05-009.

The bulletin released yesterday announces the existence of a vulnerability in the way Microsoft Media Player and MSN Messenger process PNG files (a compressed graphics format similar to JPG, but unencumbered by patents). This vulnerability was rated critical and affects all versions of Windows Media Player starting with 6.4, so it must have been around for a while. It could allow an attacker to take complete control over an affected machine, by simply having users open or view a file in PNG format.

"New worms are mostly written to exploit recently disclosed vulnerabilities, but in this case we've beaten the VXers [virus writers] to the punch. We are now prepared to detect any worm or virus that attempts to use this vulnerability, without the need of having a specific signature for it first." declared BitDefender CTO Bogdan Dumitru.

 

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