Interesting tidbit in iDefense Security Advisory 06.26.07

[Kevin.Wall at qwest.com (Wall, Kevin)]

Ken,

You wrote...
> Mind you, the overrun can only be exploited when specific characters  
> are used as input to the loop in the code.  Thus, I'm inclined to  
> think that this is an interesting example of a bug that would have  
> been extraordinarily difficult to find using black box testing, even  
> fuzzing.
> <...deleted...>
> The iDefense team doesn't say how the (anonymous) person  
> who reported it found it, but I for one would be really curious to  
> hear that story.

Reading from the iDefense security advisory on this, it says:

  IV. DETECTION

  iDefense has confirmed the existence of this vulnerability in version
  10.5-GOLD of RealNetworks' RealPlayer and HelixPlayer. Confirmation of
  the existence this vulnerability within HelixPlayer was done via
SOURCE
  CODE REVIEW. Older versions are assumed to be vulnerable. 

(Emphasis mine.)

So looks like it was discovered manually, possibly with the aid of a
static source code analyzer that ignores Flawfinder comments.
Apparently,
you missed that because of your jet lag. ;-)

The sad thing is that based on the documented "Disclosure Timeline", it
seems that almost 8 full months have past since the vendor
(RealNetworks)
responded with a fix. I mean, was the fix really rocket science that it
had to take THAT LONG??? IMHO, no excuse for taking that long.

-kevin
---
Kevin W. Wall           Qwest Information Technology, Inc.
Kevin.Wall at qwest.com Phone: 614.215.4788
"It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students
 that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers
 they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration"
    - Edsger Dijkstra, How do we tell truths that matter?
      http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD04xx/EWD498.html


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