FFmpeg based players have been popular for 20 years now. Has there been a single documented actual use of their libraries as the exploitation vector anytime in the last two decades?
> Given the number of opportunities present, we found that it’s possible to execute arbitrary code on a Cellebrite machine simply by including a specially formatted but otherwise innocuous file in any app on a device that is subsequently plugged into Cellebrite and scanned. There are virtually no limits on the code that can be executed.
But it was a product using a 9 year old ffmpeg build (at the time).
I'd still consider that an academic exercise rather than an exploit that was deployed in the real world (aka against a machine the attacker did not control)
Yes, I know that multimedia/image vulnerabilities are popular vectors for zero-click attacks. My point is that desktop players are not a vector for zero-click attacks, and ffmpeg has not generally been used in end-user situations that are targets of zero-click or drive-by attacks. Mostly because of the license, but still.
If the exploit chain involves the user downloading and opening a file, something like >99% of the time the next step already involves executable code (or Office macros), which makes any ffmpeg vuln completely useless.
In fairness, i dont think the majority of actual exploits used in the wild get writeups.
Budget web host using outdated software getting hacked because they havent updated in 2 years isn't exactly all that interesting of a blog post even if the victim knows enough to figure out what happened.
Yes, I’m quite familiar with that. Chrome is why I added the “generally” qualifier.
And to the best of my knowledge, there has not been any in-the-wild exploit against Chrome through the handful of ffmpeg codecs they enable. Not even pwn2own type competitions either, as I recall.
I guess I'm confused - are you trying to imply the lack of a thorough, publicly reported successful exploit (or us just not casually giving you one that you care about) means that we're all released from the responsibility of taking potential exploits seriously?
