MMS mobile phone exploit released

Buffer overflow vulnerability in MMS SMIL exploited.

Last month saw the publication of proof-of-concept code exploiting a vulnerability in the popular mobile phone Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).

Security researcher Collin Mulliner discovered the vulnerability over six months ago and reported it to software vendors, but having received no satisfactory response, chose to publish the exploit at December's Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.

The vulnerability resides in the SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) protocol used in MMS messages. Region tags in MMS SMIL are vulnerable to buffer overflow causing arbitrary code execution.

So far only two devices have been confirmed as vulnerable: the IPAQ 6315 and i-mate PDA2k, but it is believed that other devices running Pocket PC 2003 and Windows Smartphone 2003 are also likely to be at risk. However, as researchers at AV firm F-Secure were quick to point out, exploitation would be difficult in any device - since an attacker would need to guess the correct memory slot where the MMS processing code is executing and send appropriate exploit code - and malicious MMS messages would therefore be more likely to crash a device rather than infect it.

03 January 2007

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