ClamAV users are urged to upgrade to the latest version to correct two vulnerabilities that could crash the free, open-source anti-virus toolkit and lead to an attacker hijacking infected systems.
ClamAV is a popular toolkit for Unix-like operating systems and is mainly deployed to secure email exchange servers.
According to the SANS Internet Storm Center, the more serious of two bugs is related to the handling of PE (portable executable) file format. The other vulnerability is caused by a memory access error in CHM, the file extension for compressed HTML help files, according to Secunia, which has labeled both flaws "highly critical."
For attackers to exploit the two bugs, they must send "specially constructed executable files through a mail gateway or personal anti-virus client utilizing the ClamAV scanning engine."
Users who upgrade to version 0.88.5 should avoid problems. William Salusky, a SANS handler, said in a blog post Monday that alternatively, users could download release candidate v0.90RC1 from the ClamAV site.
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