Check Point Advisories

VideoLAN VLC Media Player RealText File Buffer Overflow (CVE-2008-5036)

Vulnerability
Protection

Check Point Reference:	CPAI-2008-374
Date Published:	1 Oct 2009
Severity:	High
Last Updated:	Thursday 01 October, 2009
Source:
Industry Reference:	CVE-2008-5036
Protection Provided by:	Security Gateway R81, R80, R77, R75
Who is Vulnerable?
Vulnerability Description	VLC Media Player is an open source multimedia player. It can play many audio and video formats (MPEG, DivX, ogg, Wave etc.) as well as various streaming protocols. It is highly portable and available for multiple platforms. Support for various formats is implemented in the form of plugins bundled with the player as shared object or windows DLL files. The RealText subtitle file format (.rt) is one of the formats supported by VLC Media Player. There exists a vulnerability in VideoLAN VLC Media Player. The vulnerability is caused due to a buffer overflow when playing a specially crafted RealText (.rt) subtitle file. An unauthenticated remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by enticing a user to play a specially crafted RealText subtitle file. Successful exploitation would cause a stack buffer overflow allowing the attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the logged in users. In an attack case where code injection is not successful, VideoLAN VLC client application will terminate unexpectedly. In a more sophisticated attack scenario where code injection is successful, the behaviour of the target host is entirely dependent on the intended function of the injected code. The code in such a case would execute within the security context of the current user. The affected application would also most likely stop functioning as a result of such an attack.

Protection Overview

This protection will detect and block attempts to exploit this vulnerability

In order for the protection to be activated, update your Security Gateway product to the latest IPS update. For information on how to update IPS, go to SBP-2006-05, click on Protection tab and select the version of your choice.

Security Gateway R80 / R77 / R75

In the IPS tab, click Protections and find the VideoLAN VLC Media Player RealText File Buffer Overflow protection using the Search tool and Edit the protection's settings.
Install policy on all Security Gateways.

This protection's log will contain the following information:

Attack Name: Media Player Enforcement Violation.
Attack Information: VideoLAN VLC Media Player RealText file buffer overflow