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posted by chromas on Monday April 09 2018, @06:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the (unsigned⠀int) dept.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/04/microsoft_windows_defender_rar_bug/

A remote-code execution vulnerability in Windows Defender – a flaw that can be exploited by malicious .rar files to run malware on PCs – has been traced back to an open-source archiving tool Microsoft adopted for its own use.

[...] Apparently, Microsoft forked that version of unrar and incorporated the component into its operating system's antivirus engine. That forked code was then modified so that all signed integer variables were converted to unsigned variables, causing knock-on problems with mathematical comparisons. This in turn left the software vulnerable to memory corruption errors, which can crash the antivirus package or allow malicious code to potentially execute.


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by turgid on Monday April 09 2018, @08:33PM (4 children)

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 09 2018, @08:33PM (#664658) Journal

    Maybe they could dust off the Xenix source code and start hacking? I'm sure someone somewhere must still have a drive that can read 5.25" 360k disks.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @09:02PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @09:02PM (#664675)

    One of us is psycho^W psychic.
    I've been thinking about Xenix too.
    MSFT licensed that in 1978, so it's clear that they knew about proper security even before they bought QDOS from Tim Paterson (one T) and rebranded that.

    If MICROS~1 had used UNIX file permissions from the start, that would have taken their (literally and in fact) 2-bit file ATTRIBs up to 9 bits per file.
    Not all that big a price to pay to cure 99 percent of their security problems from the start.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday April 10 2018, @02:06AM (1 child)

    by anubi (2828) on Tuesday April 10 2018, @02:06AM (#664776) Journal

    Read 5.25 360K floppies? Yup. Surprisingly, I still can do that.

    Still have several dozen disks as well. All old DOS stuff.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @02:34PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @02:34PM (#664954)

      I can see how you may read 5 of those old disk. But how do you read a quarter disk? :-)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @03:40AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @03:40AM (#664812)

    I'm sure someone somewhere must still have a drive that can read 5.25" 360k disks.

    Not needed, the images are floating around the net, though somewhat corrupted. I hear there was some "NCommander" dude trying to restore them, though...

    Restoring Xenix 386 2.2.3c, Part 1 [soylentnews.org]
    Xenix 2.2.3c Restoration: No Tools, No Problem (Part 2) [soylentnews.org]
    Xenix 2.2.3c Restoration: Damage Mapping (Part 3) [soylentnews.org]
    Xenix 2.2.3c Restoration: Xrossing The X (Part 4) [soylentnews.org]