APW 0 Posted January 3, 2006 (edited) Saturday, December 24, 2005 By David Radin and Jes Scherder An independent security researcher discovered a vulnerability this past week in several products from anti-virus company, Symantec. The problem lies within the way that Symantec's software unpacks the various data compressed in its .RAR files. .RAR files, like .ZIP files, can store one or multiple pieces of information compressed into a single file which can be unwrapped by you or another user after download. If a user programs one of Symantec's affected products to automatically scan incoming e-mail, a .RAR file housing a virus or worm could be unpacked, infecting the system and allowing the PC to be controlled remotely by hackers without any intervention from the user. According to Symantec, no attempts by hackers to exploit this flaw have yet been discovered, and they are studying any activity involving .RAR files appearing to be malicious. According to a posting at Security Focus, a community of online security professionals, the code where the weakness is located has been licensed to a number of other vendors, whose products could also be affected. Here's a link to the article: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05358/627338.stm Edited January 3, 2006 by APW Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
