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BugBlog

BugBlog Bug of the Month

Starting with January 2005, the BugBlog will pick its Bug of the Month, representing the most significant bug found in the past month. Sometimes, the bug will be the one which could potentially cause the most damage; sometimes it will be the bug which affects the most users. And sometimes, it will be the bug that is just the most interesting bug. This bug will be selected either from the free Bug of the Day, or from the subscription-only BugBlog Plus.

The Bug of the Month for July 2005 was posted as the Bug of the Day on June 26.

RealNetworks has updated most of their software, to take care of four bugs that may allow attackers to take over your computer. One bug allowed an attack via an MP3 file, another via a RealMedia file, a third via an AVI file, and a fourth which could be used in combination with some versions of Internet Explorer which could allow an attack via an HTML page which could trigger a RealMedia file to play automatically. If you use RealPlayer, RealOne Player, RealPlayer Enterprise, Rhapsody 3 on Windows, Mac or Linux, check out the chart at http://service.real.com/help/faq/security/050623_player/EN/ to see if you are vulnerable. (There are more problems on the Windows platform.)

Why this one? Two reasons -- one is the scope of the problem, stretching across the Windows, Mac, and Linux platform. The second is that the bugs allow an attacker to take over your computer due to a media file. Imagine explaining that to your boss, if you managed to hose the computers at work. "But it was supposed to be Walk Like an Egyptian, I hadn't heard that song in years!"

Previous Bugs of the Month

June 2005: Flawed Rollout for Netscape 8

May 2005: TCP/IP Fix for Windows

April 2005: Denial of Service against Symantec Norton AntiVirus

March 2005: IDN Spoofing Bug

February 2005: Windows Animated Cursor Bug

January 2005: Windows Firewall Problems with Dial-up connections

The Bug of the Month is also posted at Blogcritics.org