Even as Microsoft
was releasing its latest batch of patches, two previously
undocumented Windows Meta File (WMF) flaws have been exposed.
The new vulnerabilities were discovered by a computer enthusiast known as
'cocoruder' and affect all
Windows operating systems beyond Windows 95.
The flaws are in the Graphics Rendering Engine and could allow a hacker to
exploit a memory overrun and crash a PC.
"Our initial investigation has found that these are not security
vulnerabilities but rather performance issues that could cause an application to
stop responding," said Microsoft in a statement.
"These issues do not allow an attacker to run code or crash the operating
system. They may cause the WMF application to crash, in which case the user may
restart the application and resume activity.
"Microsoft had previously identified these issues as part of its ongoing code
maintenance and is evaluating them for inclusion in the next service pack for
the affected products."
The flaws were posted on the
Bugtraq mailing
list, and code purporting to exploit the flaws appeared shortly afterwards.
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