BugBlog Report 10/30/05: Microsoft, Skype, Rootkits

Here are some of the most significant bugs from the past week in the BugBlog.

After installing Adobe Acrobat 7 for Windows, users might have problems starting Microsoft Word, which may crash with this error message
Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library. Runtime Error! Program: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office10\Winword.exe
Then anytime you try to start Word after that, according to Adobe, it tries to start in Safe Mode. Adobe has a number of possible solutions for this, starting with installing the Acrobat 7.0.5 update. See all the details at http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/331273.html.

Two bugs have been reported in Skype, the Internet calling software. The first one can be exploited to crash Skype. The second is a buffer overflow in the way it handles some URIs and vCards, and may allow an attacker to run their own code on your system. These are cross-platform bugs that affect Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of Skype. Updates that fix these bugs have been released and are available at http://www.skype.com/download/. Skype credits Mark Rowe
of Pentest Limited, and the EADS Corporate Research Center for finding these bugs.

The Microsoft Windows Media Digital Rights Management (WMDRM) system in Windows Media Player 10 is supposed to "protect" your media files by monitoring how many times they get transferred to a portable device. (The "protection", of course, is for the media companies, and aimed at you.) Microsoft says that sometimes WMDRM will count a download twice instead of once, with the TransferCount property going down by two for a single download. Microsoft has a hotfix for this. Download it at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/887626.

Root kits are a type of malware that hide in the root, or most basic part, of your computer. What makes root kits especially nasty is that, because they are in the root, can often hide their traces from AV and spyware software. C Net's Security Watch gives the basics on them in Root Kit 101. Read the whole thing at http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3513_7-6361348-1.html.

See the BugBlog for continuing coverage of bugs and other things that go wrong with your computer.

Article Author: Bruce Kratofil

Bruce Kratofil blogs on bugs and other things that can go wrong with your computer at The BugBlog, and writes about computers and economics at BJK Research

Visit Bruce Kratofil's author page — Bruce Kratofil's Blog