On Sat, 2011-12-17 at 00:01 +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote: > On Thursday 15 December 2011 16:36:43 Patrick O'Callaghan wrote: > > On Thu, 2011-12-15 at 12:29 -0800, Joe Zeff wrote: > > > I was under the impression that codecs were executables and as such, OS > > > specific. I presume that a Windows codec/trojan could run under wine if > > > you have it installed, but would it be able to do any damage? Enquiring > > > minds want to *KNOW!* > > > > They're usually libraries and may be cross-platform, e.g. the mplayer > > non-free codecs are designed for Windows but work in Linux as well. > > That's not quite precisely true, those codecs do *not* work in Linux. Rather, > the mplayer devs have reverse-engineered the various library calls in the > codec DLL's, and are able to provide a simulated environment to make the > number-crunching routines of various codecs work as in Windows (think virtual > machine environment). > > So the Windows codec DLL's used by mplayer are executed in a sandboxed > environment and mplayer is just reading off the results of the calculations. > There are no system calls available, no filesystem access, no network > availability, no nothing. A real coding/decoding routine shouldn't need any of > those, so mplayer doesn't even try to provide them. It's just using those > "executables" as closed-source library routines, in contrast to the executable > processes. Or put more simply --- there is a difference between an executable > and an executable... ;-) > > Those DLL's don't even work under Windows, without the support of an external > parent process calling them, like mplayer. So those are perfectly safe, as > long as the parent process is using them for the intended purpose only. OK, that's worth knowing. poc -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
