An unpatched problem with
Windows applications is much worse than first thought, with hundreds of programs, not just
40, vulnerable to attack, a Slovenian security company said today.
"It was a shocking surprise," said Mitja Kolsek, CEO of Acros Security. "It appears that most every Windows application has this vulnerability."
Yesterday, American researcher HD Moore announced that he had
stumbled on about 40 Windows applications with a common vulnerability, but declined to name the programs or go into detail about the bug.
Today, Kolsek said that Acros has been digging into a new class of vulnerabilities for months, has found more than 200 flawed applications harboring more than 500 separate bugs, and reported its findings to
Microsoft more than four months ago.
In other words, the problem is much more widespread than Moore let on Wednesday.
"We examined a bunch of applications, more than 220 from about 100 leading software vendors, and found that most every one had the vulnerability," said Kolsek. Acros built a specialized tool to help its researchers pinpoint which applications were vulnerable.
According to Kolsek, the bug is in how most applications load and execute code libraries -- ".dll" files in Windows -- and executables, including ".exe" and ".com" files. He dubbed the class of bugs as "remote binary planting," and said the flaws could be easily exploited.
