F-Secure yesterday urged users of its anti-virus products to apply security patches following the discovery of potentially serious security vulnerability in 18 of its products. The security bug - unearthed by security researchers at ISS - involves flaws in the processing of ARJ archive files by an antivirus library that give rise to possible buffer overflow attacks. Desktop, server (Linux and Windows) and gateway version of F-Secure's security products all need attention.

"We urge all affected users to apply the patch, before some clown virus-writer tries to exploit it," said Mikko Hyppönen, director of anti-virus research at F-Secure. "This hole is related to a bug in our routine that unpacks ARJ archive files. The bug would allow an attacker to execute code when his ARJ file is scanned."

Update details are here. ISS's alert is here. Earlier this week ISS issued an alert over a similar but distinct vulnerability involving 30 security packages from Symantec. In that case, the vulnerability stemmed from a flaw in an antivirus scanning component involving the processing of UPX compressed files. ®

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