14 DAY TRIAL // Nowadays, torrent files tend to become one of the most used file transfer methods because they allow you to download files quick and easy without needing a special server to host the files. Because more and more users are looking for a powerful program to help them use torrent trackers, the market is continuously attracting companies to develop new solution. uTorrent is currently one of the most popular tools used for torrent download because it functions with minimal computer resources bundled with a nice interface.
Although I use uTorrent periodically and I guess many of you are huge fans of the application, you must know that security company Secunia discovered a highly critical security flaw in the program that can allow an attacker to take control over an affected system. As I said, the security firm rated the vulnerability as "highly critical", sustaining the only affected version of the utility is 1.6 build 474 but some other editions of uTorrent might be also vulnerable to attacks.
"defsec has discovered a vulnerability in uTorrent, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. The vulnerability is caused due to a boundary error when processing ".torrent" files and can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow via a specially crafted ".torrent" file with an overly long (greater than 4800 bytes) "announce" option. Successful exploitation allows execution of arbitrary code," Secunia sustained in a security advisory.
The security company also posted a solution to avoid being exploited by this vulnerability is to avoid opening untrusted .torrent files available on multiple websites.
uTorrent was also tested by Softpedia and it is available as a free download on this link.