Security alert: QuickTime bug may be used as a vector for attack
Posted by Dave Merten 
Sep 21, 2008 at 12:30pm
Intego, a Macintosh security specialist, recently announced that it has discovered a QuickTime bug which may be used as a vector for attack. Apple’s QuickTime, the media software used to play music and movies on Mac OS X and Windows, has recently been update to version 7.5.5, but a serious bug has already been discovered that may be used as a vector for malicious attacks.
Exploit: OSX.Exploit.QT755-1
Discovered: September 18, 2008
Risk: Low
The “” tag fails to handle long strings, which can lead to a heap overflow in QuickTime Player, iTunes, or any other program that attempts to display media using a QuickTime plug-in. This can be a browser, such as Apple’s Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, or, on Mac OS X, could be any program that displays graphics or movies inline, such as Mail, or even the Finder if a user tries to view a file with Quick Look. For now, files which contain offending strings will crash programs attempting to display them, but malicious code could be added to such files, and may be executed with no user interaction, other than an attempt to view a file.
This bug can be remote or local, as QuickTime parses any supplied file for a recognized header even if the header does not correspond to the file type; for example, a malicious user could put XML content in an MP4 or MOV file, or could add a QuickTime media file to a web page which could then cause a browser to crash while executing malicious code.
Intego’s Virus Monitoring Center is keeping a close eye on this bug and whether malicious users are attempting to add payload to QuickTime files. Intego will naturally update the virus definitions for Intego VirusBarrier X5 if this occurs. Intego will be posting more information, as it becomes available, on the Intego Mac Security Blog.
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Dave Merten
Dave was one of the founding guides at ‘The Mining Company,’ now known as About.com, in February 1998. Dave was their ‘Focus on Mac Support’ guide. In 2004 he started ‘G5 Owners Support Group,’ and in 2005, renamed it ‘Mac Owners Support Group.’ In 2006, he started the ‘MacOSG Support Corner’ column here at Macsimum News.
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