ID: IRCNE2013051854
Date: 2013-05-22
According to "computerworld", security researchers found serious vulnerabilities in the engines of several popular first-person shooter video games that could allow attackers to compromise their online servers and the computers of players accessing them.
Security researchers Luigi Auriemma and Donato Ferrante from Malta-based security consultancy firm ReVuln found memory corruption and buffer-overflow issues in "CryEngine 3," "Unreal Engine 3," "Hydrogen Engine" and "id Tech 4." These are game engines that are used in video games like "Quake 4," "Crysis 2," "Homefront," "Brink," "Monday Night Combat," "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars", "Sanctum", "Breach," "Nexuiz" and many others.
The vulnerabilities found by the two researchers can be used to launch remote code execution or denial-of-service attacks against game clients and servers by sending maliciously crafted data packets to them.
An attacker could, for example, set up a rogue server for one of the affected games and list it on a master server -- a database of available game servers that gets queried by clients. This would allow him to compromise the computers of any players that join his rogue server by exploiting one of the remote code execution vulnerabilities present in the game engine.
Servers can also be compromised or crashed by sending them malicious packets from a client. If an attacker wants to disrupt a larger community of players, he can obtain a list of available game servers from a master server and crash them at regular intervals by exploiting one of the denial-of-service flaws.
Game vulnerabilities could also be used to compromise the computers of specific individuals or organizations in targeted attacks, the two researchers said.
- 2