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Microsoft modifies open-source code, blows hole in Windows Defender

Accepted submission by mrpg mailto:mrpgNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org at 2018-04-09 02:28:45
Software
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/04/microsoft_windows_defender_rar_bug/ [theregister.co.uk]

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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