Researchers find vulnerability in Windows Vista

November 20, 2008 – 11:38 AM

An Austrian security vendor has found a vulnerability in Windows Vista that it says could possibly allow an attacker to run unauthorized code on a PC.

The problem is rooted in the Device IO Control, which handles internal device communication. Researchers at Phion have found two different ways to cause a buffer overflow that could corrupt the memory of the operating system’s kernel.

In one of the scenarios, a person would already have to have administrative rights to the PC. In general, vulnerabilities that require that level of access somewhat undermine the risk since the attacker already has permission to use to the PC.

But it may be possible to trigger the buffer overflow without administrative rights, said Thomas Unterleitner, Phion’s director of endpoint security software.

Source:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/112008-researchers-find-vulnerability-in-windows.html?fsrc=rss-security