18 October 2010, 16:58

Security problems in media players

RealPlayer logo Vulnerabilities in the Winamp and RealPlayer media players reportedly allow malicious code to be injected and executed on Windows PCs via specially crafted media files. Simply accessing a compromised web page could, under certain circumstances, be enough to fall victim to an attack.

RealPlayer contains a total of seven holes across its various versions. Updating to versions SP 1.1.5, 4.0 Beta, RealPlayer Enterprise 2.1.3, Mac RealPlayer 11.0 - 12.0 or Linux RealPlayer 11.0.2.174 addresses the problems.

Winamp's code for processing .mkv and .mtm files contains two vulnerabilities which can reportedly be exploited to compromise systems. The affected version is Winamp 5.581, but previous versions are also likely to be vulnerable. No update has so far become available. While the programmer who discovered the Winamp holes had originally reported two further holes, these holes could not be reproduced.