Today was the first Windows Update fix published that I helped push through through Microsoft’s system.
When Windows unpacks WMF/EMFs it does not validate the parameters of triangle gradients correctly resulting in a memory clobber in kernel mode – generally consider to be a bad thing ;-)
It was actually uncovered by one of our remote offices. I was a bit skeptical when they said printing one of our maps would blue screen the system. They gave me a project and EMF and sure enough, it blue screened my system. At first I was a bit worried as the blue screen happened after printing had left our code and was in the queue. However, looking at the kernel dump in WinDbg it was obvious it was a kernel bug, not a driver or application bug.
I passed it on to our Microsoft rep who pretty much had the same reaction as me: Yeh, right; oh sh*t! It blue screened my system!
It was pretty amusing as not only could you crash your own machine you could take out another machine by remote printing.
So after a little more than year of working with Microsoft, helping come up with reproductions, working on a business case to justify it, verifying that the patch worked, it’s out.
Seriously, all I did was champion this and push it though the system. It was a previously reported bug and was even fixed in Windows 2000 and Vista. I just lobbied for a WinXP patch since the majority of our customers are on WinXP and it could crash and possibly compromise a system.
Still it’s nice that it’s out and I’m happy to have been a part of it.
/my arm is tired from patting myself on the back…
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I’d print you a certificate of merit, but my system bluescreens every time I try to print it out.
— John Hattan Mar 10, 08:01 PM #
Print it on your mac mini…
Actually it was sometime weird for me. It’s not often to be sitting at your machine and wishing “please blue screen, please blue screen…”
— Bryan Mau Mar 10, 11:03 PM #