Internet Explorer with an installed version of Real Player beware. A vulnerability has been discovered recently which could allow remote code execution. According to Zdnet users should either switch browsers for the time until an patch is released or disabling killbits for two Active X classes. They forgot to mention the third option which would be to uninstall Real Player (temporarily).
Affected are all Real Player versions running under Internet Explorer. Microsoft has an article up that explains Killbits and what they do. They basically prevent Active X controls from being loaded in Internet Explorer. I still would recommend to either switch to Firefox or Opera temporarily or uninstall Real Player for the time until a security patch has been created.
Researcher Elazar Broad has posted to the Full Disclosure mailing list a so-called heap overflow vulnerability that makes it possible for an attacker to modify heap blocks after they are freed and overwrite certain registers.
The killbits that should be disabled are the following:
- 2F542A2E-EDC9-4BF7-8CB1-87C9919F7F93
- CFCDAA03-8BE4-11CF-B84B-0020AFBBCCFA
This will definitely have the effect that some Real Player functions will stop working properly.
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