Three buffer overflow security vulnerabilities in Java Web Start may independently allow an untrusted Java Web Start application that is downloaded from a website to elevate its privileges. For example, an untrusted Java Web Start application may grant itself permissions to read and write local files or execute local applications that are accessible to the user running the untrusted application. A vulnerability in Java Web Start may allow an untrusted Java Web Start application to elevate its privileges. For example, an application may grant itself permissions to read and write local files or execute local applications that are accessible to the user running the untrusted application. A vulnerability in Java Web Start may allow an untrusted Java Web Start application to create files on the system that the untrusted application runs on and leverage these files to run local applications with the privileges of the user running the untrusted Java Web Start application.
CVE-2008-1188: http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/489466/30/0/threaded -- Vulnerability Details: This vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable installations of Sun Java Web Start. User interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability in that the target must visit a malicious page. The specific flaw exists in the useEncodingDecl() function used while checking xml based JNLP files for UTF8 characters. When a user downloads a malicious JNLP file, the data immediately preceding the opening of the xml tag is read into a static buffer. If an overly long key name in the xml header is included, a stack based buffer overflow occurs, resulting in an exploitable condition.
More on CVE-2008-1188: http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/489467/30/0/threaded The specific flaw exists in the useEncodingDecl() function used while parsing the xml header character encoding attribute. When a user downloads a malicious JNLP file, the charset value is read into a static buffer. If an overly charset name in the xml header is included, a stack based buffer overflow occurs, resulting in an exploitable condition.
Note that CVE-2008-1191 did not affect JDK5 and therefore should not be listed in the advisory or the bug as it was not affected.