Virus prevention, in particular the jpg exploit

Whiskers · 10-03-2004, 09:57 PM

I've been reading the new jpg exploit and wondering what I can do to protect my system. Even if my machine would be affected, my guess is that its a windows only virus? so I could in theory have in infection and not know it, and thus it could transfer to the windows boxes on the netwrok via samba shares. So what can i do to protect my system from getting infected with virus, both windows and linux viruses?

and just my 2 cents, if they would stop posting these exploits there wouldnt be as many viruses to exploit them!!

320mb · 10-03-2004, 10:07 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Whiskers
So what can i do to protect my system from getting infected with virus, both windows and linux viruses?

Turn OFF all active scripting in windows

Quote:

if they would stop posting these exploits there wouldnt be as many viruses to exploit them!!

NO, if M$ would stop putting out Lousy coded programs, then there would be nothing to exploit!!

m00t00 · 10-03-2004, 10:10 PM

Security through obscurity does _not_ work. If people stopped posting exploits, only a smaller crowd would have them, true (mabye), but the damage would be bad, quite easily worse, for the simple fact that if the vendor doesnt know about it, they cant fix it.

chrism01 · 10-04-2004, 11:12 AM

Mozilla anf Firefox have recent patches to fix this. eg Firefox is now 1.0.1

SciYro · 10-04-2004, 12:53 PM

i don't believe the linux jpeg libs have this vulnerability do they?

win32sux · 10-04-2004, 08:09 PM

no, linux isn't affected by this flaw...

the new firefox preview is simply that: a new firefox preview...

RandomLinuxNewb · 10-05-2004, 01:15 AM

I read that libjpg was updated recently for some buffer overflows so it's not just windows. Buffer Overflows are found in ALL code not just windows.

win32sux · 10-05-2004, 02:31 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by RandomLinuxNewb
I read that libjpg was updated recently for some buffer overflows so it's not just windows. Buffer Overflows are found in ALL code not just windows.

you are confused with the libpng issue we had a while back... that one did affect libpng-using applications on any operating system...

but this current exploit affects only windows products... it's a bug in microsoft's Graphic Device Interface (GDI)...

Quote:

This is --not-- the fault of the JPEG standard, and the JPEG committee has --no-- responsibility for either the problem or its suggested solutions. In view of the serious nature of this problem however, we recommend that all users of Microsoft products read the above notices and take appropriate action.

http://www.jpeg.org/newsrel10.html

win32sux · 10-05-2004, 05:21 AM

by the way, it looks like the firefox preview release patch was for an unrelated and non-critical issue:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=18882