VLC media player: Format string vulnerabilities

Background

VLC media player is a multimedia player for various audio and video formats.

Description

David Thiel from iSEC Partners Inc. discovered format string errors in various plugins when parsing data. The affected plugins include Vorbis, Theora, CDDA and SAP.

Impact

A remote attacker could entice a user to open a specially crafted media file, possibly resulting in the execution of arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running VLC media player.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All VLC media player users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=media-video/vlc-0.8.6c"