4 ms·

I don't understand how this could be a bug with the fonts. Fonts should never be able to BSOD a system.

• ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Fonts are rendered by the kernel (architecture bug explained above), fonts have "code" in the form of hints which directs the rendering. Bad data in the fonts and/or hinting leads to the rendering algorithm overwriting memory/stack. Since we're in kernel mode it doesn't generate a fault and instead corrupts the kernel. Blam! BSOD. No doubt there are zero day exploits in there as well.
  • yuhong 14y ago
    Duqu is one example of such an exploit.
  • qb45 14y ago
    Actually, even without hints or any other "code" parsing nontrivial formats provides opportunities for bugs causing buffer overflows or other memory corruptions. This simply shouldn't be done in the kernel, period. However, twenty years ago (when this code likely has been written) security in the PC world was pretty much nonexistent and nobody cared about such issues.
    • yuhong 14y ago
      AFAIK MS's own web browser did not support embedded fonts until IE4 in 1997.