An unknown researcher has reported buffer overflow vulnerability in processing of GIF images in Java Runtime Environment which may lead to an untrusted applet elevating its privileges. It may cause an applet to give permission for reading and writing local files or executing local applications with a user running unknown applet.

The following releases might be affected:

SDK and JRE 1.4.2_12 and earlier
JDK and JRE 5.0 Update 9 and earlier
SDK and JRE 1.3.1_18 and earlier

The symptoms of the vulnerability cannot be determined but Sun has addressed the issue in the following releases:

SDK and JRE 1.4.2_13 or later
JDK and JRE 5.0 Update 10 or later
SDK and JRE 1.3.1_19 or later

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