14 June 2007, 09:14

HP laptops vulnerable

HP has discovered vulnerabilities in its Help and Support Centre software using which nefarious individuals could inject arbitrary code onto a system by means of crafted web pages. The software comes pre-installed on HP and HP Compaq laptops with Windows XP operating systems.

HP does not provide any details of the security vulnerability. The company merely mentions in an article on the update that web pages could exploit a buffer overflow in the help and support centre to read or write arbitrary files. Versions prior to the current version 4.4.C, which fixes the vulnerability, are affected.

Users of HP laptops should check under Add or Remove Programs in the control panel to see whether HP Help and Support is installed on their computer. If it is, it should either be uninstalled or the software updated.