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Yahoo has shipped new versions of its MusicMatch Jukebox media player to fix security holes that could put users at risk of buffer overflow attacks.
In an online advisory, Yahoo Inc. strongly recommended that users upgrade to avoid code-execution and cross-site scripting attacks.
“Some potential impacts of a buffer overflow and cross-site scripting may include the loss of data, the need to reinstall software on their computers or the crash of an application such as Internet Explorer,” the multimedia companys advisory said.
The updated MusicMatch Jukebox can be downloaded here.
The vulnerabilities are rated “moderately critical” by security-alerts aggregator Secunia.
“To our knowledge, there have been no known executable code exploits related to this issue and no users have been impacted to date,” Yahoo added.
Affected versions include MusicMatch Jukebox for Windows XP versions 10.00.2047 and earlier. An update is also available for non-Windows-XP and localized Jukebox users running version 9.00.0159 or earlier, Yahoo said.
Hyperdose Security, the company credited with reporting the issue to Yahoo, released four separate alerts with vulnerability details and proof-of-concept exploit code.
Hyperdose researcher Robert Fly said the most serious bug was found in “DiagCollectionControl.dll,” an ActiveX control which contains a “Safe for Scripting Interface.” The flaw can be exploited by an attacker to pass a malicious value into the safe path, causing the specified file to be overwritten.
“Obviously, much worse can be done as there are no restrictions on what files can be overwritten, assuming the user has access to them. It may be possible to control the data that goes into the file as well, although I have not yet identified a method for doing this,” Fly said.
Yahoo has since removed the Safe for Scripting or Safe for Initialization interfaces in “DiagCollectionControl.dll” to protect users.
Fly also published details on a boundary error that can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow and a vulnerability that is created by the way log information and files are stored on MusicMatch Jukebox.
He also included warnings about the inappropriate adding of “*.musicmatch.com” to the Trusted Zone in Internet Explorer and an insecure “CreateProcess()” call that may allow execution of a malicious program named “c:program.exe.”
MusicMatch, which was acquired by Yahoo in September 2004, forms the hub of the companys music download business. It is roughly the equivalent of Apple Inc.s iTunes Music Service, Microsoft Corp.s Windows Media Player or RealNetwork Inc.s RealPlayer.
The media-player security fix from Yahoo comes less than a week after RealNetwork released patches for a high-risk vulnerability that could cause remote code-execution attacks.
In recent months, Microsoft has also patched holes in its flagship WMP software.