A dodgy JPEG could crash Microsoft Internet Explorer, or even allow system exploitation, Michal Zalewski, Polish security expert has discovered in a recent set of experiments. From The Inquirer:Other browsers seemed to handle Zalewski's corrupt JPEG experiments somewhat better, although it's not all doom and gloom for IE, as in past experiments Zalewski found IE was the best at handling iffy HTML mark-up.Software crashes were a sign that the Volish programmers had not written code that could take corrupted input into account. Many of the crashes were associated with memory corruption, he said.
If a hacker or hackerette were to use corrupted JPGs, he or she could control memory corruption, he or she could then easily alter the program and take over your computer, Zalewski warned.