The Magic Byte Bug: Bypassing Virus Scanning in Norman 5.81 with 5.83.02 Engine

CVE-2005-3378 · MEDIUM Severity

AV:N/AC:H/AU:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Multiple interpretation error in Norman 5.81 with the 5.83.02 engine allows remote attackers to bypass virus scanning via a file such as BAT, HTML, and EML with an "MZ" magic byte sequence which is normally associated with EXE, which causes the file to be treated as a safe type that could still be executed as a dangerous file type by applications on the end system, as demonstrated by a "triple headed" program that contains EXE, EML, and HTML content, aka the "magic byte bug."

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