Remote buffer overflow in MPlayer

Background

Quote from http://mplayerhq.hu

“MPlayer is a movie player for LINUX (runs on many other Unices, and non-x86 CPUs, see the documentation). It plays most MPEG, VOB, AVI, OGG/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, FLI, RM, NuppelVideo, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies, too.”

Description

A vulnerability exists in the MPlayer HTTP parser which may allow an attacker to craft a special HTTP header (“Location:”) which will trick MPlayer into executing arbitrary code on the user’s computer.

Impact

An attacker without privileges may exploit this vulnerability remotely, allowing arbitrary code to be executed in order to gain unauthorized access.

Workaround

A workaround is not currently known for this issue. All users are advised to upgrade to the latest version of the affected package.

Resolution

MPlayer may be upgraded as follows:

x86 and SPARC users should:

 # emerge sync
 
 # emerge -pv ">=media-video/mplayer-0.92-r1"
 # emerge ">=media-video/mplayer-0.92-r1"

AMD64 users should:

 # emerge sync
 
 # emerge -pv ">=media-video/mplayer-1.0_pre2-r1"
 # emerge ">=media-video/mplayer-1.0_pre2-r1"

PPC users should:

 # emerge sync
 
 # emerge -pv ">=media-video/mplayer-1.0_pre3-r2"
 # emerge ">=media-video/mplayer-1.0_pre3-r2"