Hackers can hack your PC by exploiting critical vulnerability in VLC media player

VideoLAN releases a security update for vulnerable VLC Media player

VLC media player has been discovered with two high-risk security flaws on software versions 3.0.6 and earlier that can allow attackers to load specially crafted video files in the vulnerable system to execute the arbitrary code.

For those unaware, VLC media player is one of the best and most popular media players with over 3 billion downloads.

It is a free, open source, and portable, cross-platformย which can be used on Windows, macOS, Linux, as well as Android and iOS mobile platforms. Whatever the format is, VLC media player can play almost any kind of audio and video formats you want.

Also read- How To Download YouTube Videos Using VLC

Symeon Paraschoudis, a researcher from Pen Test Partners, who identified the first high-severity vulnerability as CVE-2019-12874 is MKV double free flaw and resides in ” zlib_decompress_extra() (demux/mkv/utils.cpp) ” function of VideoLAN VLC player.

It can be triggered while parsing a malformed mkv file type within the Matroska demuxer.

The second high-risk flaw, identified asย CVE-2019-5439 and discovered by zhangyang from Hackerone is aย buffer overflow vulnerability that resides in ReadFrame (demux/avi/avi.c).

It allows a remote user to create some specially crafted avi or mkv files that, when loaded by the target user, will trigger a heap buffer overflow into a targeted system.

Also Read- Best Free Media Players For Windows 10

Successful execution of a malformed file in the targeted system by a malicious third party could trigger either a crash of VLC or an arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the target user.

A potential attacker can exploit these vulnerabilities by tricking the user to explicitly open a specially crafted malicious MKV or AVI video file.

Also read- How To Download Subtitles In VLC Media Player

VideoLAN, a non-profit organization that has developed VLC, has published a security advisory, โ€œThe user should refrain from opening files from untrusted third parties or accessing untrusted remote sites (or disable the VLC browser plugins) until the patch is applied.โ€

VLC users have been strongly recommended to upgrade their media player software to VLC 3.0.7 or later versionsย to avoid hackers from exploiting this vulnerability on their systems.

Kavita Iyer
Kavita Iyerhttps://www.techworm.net
An individual, optimist, homemaker, foodie, a die hard cricket fan and most importantly one who believes in Being Human!!!

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