The VLC media player from VideoLAN Project has been improved with the release of the more secure version 1.1.3. This free open source media player, which is able to play most video and audio formats, can also be installed or compiled on different platforms.

The developers were able to patch significant security vulnerability which is discussed at length in CVE-2010-2937.  This vulnerability in the software which affects versions 0.9.0 through 1.1.2 could result to a denial of service (DoS) attack, may cause the player to abruptly terminate, or allow for the execution of random code. The exploit was discovered by a researcher from FortiGuard Labs.

The ingredients for such exploit would have the victim to first download a tampered media file, e.g. a MP3 or a video file, and either execute it or add it up to their playlist. This is why opening files from untrustworthy sites and unknown websites is not advisable. It would be safer to view media at more reputable websites.

The new version also includes fixes to numerous bugs and other updates. Some of the more notable fixes were: the Podcast module was improved, scripts were updated in the DVD module, and some translations were updated.

The VideoLan Project team urges all its users to update to this most recent release. You can find out more and download the media player here. If you are a developer and are interested in the source code, feel free to visit them and get your copy at http://www.videolan.org/ . The VLC player is a great media player for Windows, Linux, UNIX and Mac. If you already have VLC installed, you can easily update to the newer version. The nice thing about VLC is that if your computer is running on a different operating system, you have to option to build and compile your own version of VLC to run multimedia content on that machine. VLC media player is uses the second version of the General Public License or GPLv2.

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