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 (http://www.f-secure.com/security/fsc-2005-1.shtml). ISS's alert is here (http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/alerts/id/188). 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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