SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
A vulnerability in Ghidra, the generic disassembler and decompiler released by the NSA in early March, could be exploited to execute code remotely, researchers say.
The flaw, an XML external entity (XXE) issue, was discovered in the Ghidra project loading process immediately after the tool was released.
Impacting the project open/restore, the vulnerability can be exploited by anyone able to trick a user into opening or restoring a specially crafted project, a GitHub report reveals.
To reproduce the issue, one would need to create a project, close it, then put an XXE payload in any of the XML files in the project directory. As soon as the project is opened, the payload is executed.
Now that's just embarrassing.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday March 21 2019, @05:52PM
It seems like the nature of the flaw isn't particularly great for compromising anyone they feel like, but requires similar levels of social engineering as your typical "look at this word.docx" packed with macros.
"Back doors" are usually more vulnerable to at-whim exploitation.
I'm not saying the NSA isn't a garbage organization that spies on americans for political ends, just that the engineering here isn't particularly good for a back door attack.