Security holes in antivirus software are nothing new, but holes that exist across multiple platforms? That’s rare… but it just happened. Google’s Tavis Ormandy has discovered a vulnerability in Symantec’s antivirus engine (used in both Symantec- and Norton-branded suites) that compromises Linux, Mac and Windows computers. If you use an early version of a compression tool to squeeze executables, you can trigger a memory buffer overflow that gives you root-level control over a system.
The kickers are that it’s both easy to launch the exploit and particularly vicious in most cases. As Symantec is intercepting system input and output, you only need to email a file — the victim doesn’t even need to read the email, just the act of AV scanning it is a trigger — or send a web link to wreck someone’s day.
Read more at Engadget
