Apple QuickTime TeXML Memory Corruption (June 26, 2013)

QuickTime is an extensible multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and later operating systems. Apple QuickTime supports a number of native file formats to store images, audio, and movies such as .mov for movies and .pct for image files.

TeXML has been developed as an OpenSource project with the aim to automatically present XML data as PDF with sophisticated layout properties. An example of an XML document, which has already been transformed into the TeXML structure:

  	 		documentclass[a4paper]{article} 		usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} 		usepackage[T1]{fontenc} 	 	 		Misinterpretation of special characters as being functional characters is called "Escaping", thus: $, ^, > 	  

QuickTime TeXML has a specific format for constructing 3GPP-compliant timed text tracks in a QuickTime movie file. The following example demonstrates a typical TeXML file:

    	 		 			 		 		 			 			 			This is a simple run of text. 			 		 	  

A memory corruption vulnerability exists in Apple QuickTime. A remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability by enticing a user to download and process a specially crafted TeXML file with the vulnerable software. This can lead to code execution in the context of the vulnerable application.

Dell SonicWALL Threat team has researched this vulnerability and released the following IPS signatures to address the issue:

• 9957 Apple QuickTime TeXML Memory Corruption Buffer Overflow 1
• 9958 Apple QuickTime TeXML Memory Corruption Buffer Overflow 2

This vulnerability is referred by CVE as CVE-2013-1015.

Security News

The SonicWall Capture Labs Threat Research Team gathers, analyzes and vets cross-vector threat information from the SonicWall Capture Threat network, consisting of global devices and resources, including more than 1 million security sensors in nearly 200 countries and territories. The research team identifies, analyzes, and mitigates critical vulnerabilities and malware daily through in-depth research, which drives protection for all SonicWall customers. In addition to safeguarding networks globally, the research team supports the larger threat intelligence community by releasing weekly deep technical analyses of the most critical threats to small businesses, providing critical knowledge that defenders need to protect their networks.