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FeedSource: [TheRegister] collected from rss-bot logs

Time: 2016-06-09 03:07:13 UTC

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/09/chromes_pdf_reader_has_arbitrary_code_execution_flaw/ [theregister.co.uk]

Title: Chrome's PDF reader has arbitrary code execution flaw

Suggested Topics by Probability (Experimental) : 33.3 science 16.7 software 16.7 hardware 16.7 careers 16.7 OS

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Chrome's PDF reader has arbitrary code execution flaw

A Researcher at Cisco's Talos limb have discovered an arbitrary code execution flaw in PDFium, the PDF reader installed by default in Google's Chrome browser.

                               

The flaw looks like it is down to a tiny error by Chrome's developers, as Nikolic writes [talosintel.com] that “An existing assert call in the OpenJPEG library prevents the heap overflow in standalone builds, but in the build included in release versions of Chrome, the assertions are omitted.”

                               

That omission means that when PDFium invokes the OpenJPEG library, it can create a buffer overflow. Once that's happened, bad guys can go to town with their own code.

                               

Nikolic writes that Google has fixed the flaw, with a single line of code that changed an assert to an if.

                               

You can take advantage of that change by simply keeping Chrome up to date: version 51.0.2704.63 makes the change to knock the bug on the head. Chrome auto-updates unless instructed to do otherwise, so most users will be protected.

                               

Google acted with impressive speed after learning of the bug: Nikolic says Talos reported the flaw on May 19th and that Google fixed it on May 25th. ®

                               

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