Probably the biggest thing to ever happen to Linux

William O'Higgins Witteman william.ohiggins-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
Mon Aug 21 23:14:16 UTC 2006


On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 05:00:30PM -0400, Scott Elcomb wrote:
>On 8/18/06, ted leslie <tleslie-RBVUpeUoHUc at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>[...]
>>i almost don't believe it,
>>i wonder if it only going to be wmv8 and not 9 or something stupid like
>>that,
>>or maybe MS will then standardize on wmv10 ?
>
>I had a PocketPC (2003 IIRC) for a while and the only thing I used it
>for was Media Player.  The compression (using .wmv) was wonderful, so
>having that opened up is a good thing.  But I do have to wonder how
>long it will be before .wmv viruses become a threat to linux boxes.

I suspect it'll be a long, long time.  The reason wmv virii exist for
Windoze is that the OS is full of easily-exploitable hooks so that MS
software can update the OS at a fundamental level without bothering the
user.  Unless your wmv player is broken and you are running as root,
there is little chance of an exploit.  The big issue is that wmv
contains self-executing meta code - any player could, because they see
this as a huge vulnerability, run this code in a chroot jail to ensure
it is encapsulated safely, if it is executed at all.
-- 

yours,

William

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