AVG, Symantec & McAfee… Are They Protecting You? Hundreds productsecurity appears to be putting their users at risk, according to researchers who discovered bugs in their code.
The research comes from the EnSilo duo (Udi Yavo and Tommer Bitton) who discovered bugs in anti-virus and Windows security tools before presenting them at the conference Black Hat which will take place in Las Vegas next month.
Researchers report that 15 products are affected by AVG, Symantec and McAfee. Indeed, many of these are more vulnerable through Microsoft's code DetoursWhich usesfor “re-routing Win32 APIs in applications. This code is used inside almost every Microsoft product.”
The researchers did not specify whether an improved version of Microsoft's enhanced mitigation experience toolkit (EMET) is affected.
"We found six different security issues arising from the incorrect application of the code and injection techniques," they say. "These items were found in more than 15 different products. In practice, this means that thousands of products are affected. "
Microsoft is reportedly preparing a patch for Detours and it will probably be released next month. Until then, millions of users remain exposed to this security vulnerability.
The researchers tested hooks of various functions common to all security products as well as man-in-the-middle malware such as trojan Duqu, and came to the disappointing conclusion that many of them are vulnerable to exploits.
