alt Hacker NewsI wonder if this vulnerable codec is enabled by default when building FFmpeg? Because if so, then it doesn't matter that it's a "1990s game codec" because any application using FFmpeg to accept arbitrary video files is vulnerable to memory corruption, which should probably be taken more seriously.
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It isn't even like this is without precedent, the FORCEDENTRY NSO kit used the shitty old JBIG2 parser that Apple was shipping as its entry point despite the fact that approximately nobody was legitimately using JBIG2 in iMessage.
I checked with Ubuntu's ffmpeg and it is enabled by default. There are a huge list of codecs enabled by default (maybe all of them?). Given the security track record of codecs implemented in C, this means it's basically guaranteed that there are dozens of security vulnerabilities in ffmpeg.
I think the same is probably true for VLC to a lesser extent, which is pretty wild considering I've never heard of it being used as an attack vector, e.g. via torrents.
No, all the ancient video game codecs and other such things that are there for historical preservation purposes but are rarely actually used are disabled by default and you have to really go out of your way to enable them. This was originally for binary size/build time reasons.
The somewhat depressing reality is that if you're running ffmpeg on user-supplied multimedia without putting it in a bulletproof sandbox, you're just bound to have a bad time.
Video decoding is one of these things that no one seems to know how to do safely in C or C++, not in the long haul. And that's probably fine, because we have lightweight sandboxing tech that makes this largely moot - but there's an extra step you need to take. Maybe it's on the ffmpeg project that they don't steer people in that direction.
Trying to fix these bugs piecemeal is somewhat pointless - or at least, we've been trying for several decades, throwing a ton of manpower and compute at it, and we're still nowhere near a point where you could say "this is safe".