Risk: Medium
Security firm iDefense has confirmed that Kaspersky Anti-Virus Engine (KAV), a virus scanning engine for Windows and Linux, commonly included in various vendors' network mail gateway and host-based anti-virus products, is vulnerable to a remote exploitation of a buffer overflow vulnerability. Furthermore, this exploitation requires minimal interaction by a targeted user.
The Kasperksy Anti-Virus Engine (KAV) is found in many gateway and host-based anti-virus scanners. The vulnerability specifically exists in the CHM file parser within the KAV engine. When a corrupt CHM file is scanned by the KAV engine, a heap overflow can occur which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code with permissions of the anti-virus application's process, usually user privileges. On Microsoft platforms, affected software has not been shown to execute arbitrary code, however Kaspersky Anti-Virus will fail to scan any files after a corrupt CHM file has been encountered, thus allowing further malicious codes to reach the target.
Successful exploitation of the vulnerability can result in remote arbitrary code execution or the disabling of anti-virus functionality. In the case of Linux platforms, specifically network gateways, user interaction is not required and can lead to the compromise of trusted systems. In addition, compromising mail gateways can lead to further compromise of internal hosts by injecting malicious code into mail attachments.