HyperTerminal Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

A security vulnerability exists in the HyperTerminal application which allow a malicious user to execute arbitrary code on another user’s system.

Issue

The HyperTerminal application is a utility that installs, by default, on all versions of Windows 98, 98SE, Windows ME, Windows NT, and Windows 2000. The product contains an unchecked buffer in a section of the code that processes Telnet URLs. If a user opened an HTML mail that contained a particularly malformed Telnet URL, it would result in a buffer overrun that could enable the creator of the mail to cause arbitrary code to run on the user’s system.

Affected Products

• HyperTerminal

Solution

Software patches are available from the following locations:

• Windows 98 and 98SE:
  http://download.microsoft.com/download/win98/Update/12395/W98/EN-US/274548USA8.EXE
• Windows Me:
  http://download.microsoft.com/download/winme/Update/12395/WinMe/EN-US/274548USAM.EXE

Further Details

Source: Microsoft Corporation

Reference: Microsoft Corporation

Updated: October 18, 2000

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