RIM has issued a warning of a critical security hole in its BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which attackers can use to compromise a system remotely. The image.dll library prepares images on web sites and as email attachments for display on Blackberries but trips over specially crafted PNG and TIFF files in the process. If users get an email or surf to a web site containing such an image, the vulnerable conversion process is launched on the server, thereby executing malicious code. Up till now, most critical holes on Blackberry servers have been related to the PDF distiller.

Versions 5.0.1 to 5.0.3 MR2 of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino, versions 4.1.7 and 5.0.1 to 5.0.1 MR3 for Novell GroupWise, and the Express versions 5.0.1 to 5.0.3 for Exchange and 5.0.2 to 5.0.3 for Domino are vulnerable. RIM has provided patches on its server downloads site for all vulnerable versions and advises server admins to install them immediately. As a workaround, the vendor shows how you can prevent rich content in emails and the display of inline elements on web sites.

(djwm)