Apple QuickTime Content-Type Remote Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Apple QuickTime Content-Type Remote Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Apple QuickTime is a freely available media player. It runs on a number of platforms including MacOS and Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP operating systems.

Apple QuickTime For Windows does not perform sufficient bounds checking of the "Content-Type" header. This issue may be exploited if a server responds with a maliciously crafted "Content-Type" header to a HTTP request for a media file. A "Content-Type" header of 500+ characters is sufficient to trigger this condition, causing stack variables to be overwritten in the process.

This issue may allow a malicious server to execute arbitrary attacker-supplied code on the host of a client who makes a request for a media file. This may result in a remote compromise, possibly with elevated privileges (depending on the environment). This issue may also allow a hostile server to introduce malicious code into a system running the vulnerable software.

Exploitation of this issue requires that a user makes a request to the malicious server. However, this may also be exploited by a malicious host that is serving streaming media content to the client.

It should be noted that the QuickTime player broadcasts information about the version and the operating environment via the "User-Agent" header of the HTTP request, which may aid a malicious server in successfully exploiting this issue.

This vulnerability was reported for Japanese versions of Apple QuickTime Player, running on Japanese versions of the Microsoft Operating System. It is not known if other versions and environments are affected.