EA Origins online gaming system allows attacks on your computer

If any of you are fans (and users) of Electronic Arts Origins online store/gaming network, you are vulnerable to more or less total pwnage:

A flaw in EA's Origin game store puts its 40 million or so users at risk of remote execution vulnerabilities

The vulnerability was described by security researchers Luigi Auriemma and Donato Ferranta of ReVuln, in a paper released on Saturday.

Origin is the distribution platform behind just-launched SimCity, along with other popular EA games such as Crysis 3. It lets EA roll out updates to its games, sell titles, and also provides DRM capabilities by authenticating players' games.

But the way the software authorizes players can also be used to hijack computers and install malicious software, the researchers found.

The researchers offer what seems entirely sensible advice to defend yourself:

The issue can be mitigated by disabling the

origin://

URI globally using tools such as urlprotocolview. This means a user will be no longer able to run games via Desktop shortcuts or internet websites with customs command line parameters.

Users will be still able to play games by running games directly from Origin. This limits the usage of command line parameters. An alternative solution would be to disable the origin:// handler in the users’ browsers which supports such feature.

Users are strongly encouraged at a minimum to set their browser to prompt when handling these links.