Apple Patches 15 Security Flaws In QuickTime Media Player
Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) issued an update to its QuickTime media player Wednesday, releasing a total of 15 patches to repair a slew of media file security bugs, the majority of which could be exploited remotely to launch malicious attacks. The latest version, QuickTime 7.6.9, is available for Mac OS X, and an array of Windows platforms, including Windows 7, Vista and XP.
Overall, Apple labeled the entire QuickTime update with the highest severity ranking of "highly critical," indicating that the majority of vulnerabilities could lead to remote code execution attacks. Of the vulnerabilities Apple patched in its QuickTime application, the most critical could leave users susceptible to attacks designed to shut down or completely take control of their machines.
Included in the array of fixes were two patches, repairing a heap buffer overflow glitch and an uninitialized memory access issue in the way QuickTime handled JP2 images. The vulnerabilities allowed hackers to launch denial of service attacks or download malware onto users systems by enticing them to view malicious JP2 images.
