VLC media player 3.0.20 and earlier arbitratry code execution vulnerability

T0K3N · 17 2024 15:22

Hello, VLC got a security vulnerability.

The arch repo still has 30.0.20
https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/vlc/

Something seems to happen at arch with 3.0.21
https://archlinux.org/packages/extra-staging/x86_64/vlc/

Can somebody please explain to me why this fixed version isn’t released for everyone by now? Debian and Fedora got that update a couple days ago. Would love to understand what am I missing here.

linux-aarhus · 17 2024 15:26

possibly - please see → Switching Branches - Manjaro

Aragorn · 17 2024 15:29

It doesn’t appear to be an imminent threat. There are no reports of exploitation just yet, and it appears to also be uncertain whether it could indeed lead to remote code execution. Furthermore, the attack vector can be mitigated for now by simply avoiding MMS streams.

Details

A denial of service through a potential integer overflow could be triggered with a maliciously crafted mms stream (heap based overflow)

Impact

If successful, a malicious third party could trigger either a crash of VLC or an arbitratry code execution with the privileges of the target user.

While these issues in themselves are most likely to just crash the player, we can’t exclude that they could be combined to leak user informations or remotely execute code. ASLR and DEP help reduce the likelyness of code execution, but may be bypassed.

We have not seen exploits performing code execution through this vulnerability.

Threat mitigation

Exploitation of those issues requires the user to explicitly open a maliciously crafted mms stream.

Workarounds

The user should refrain from opening mms streams from untrusted third parties (or disable the VLC browser plugins), until the patch is applied.