Why does sending the packets out of order cause a crash?
The handshake sequence between a Windows Media server and a client is used to allocate and initialize resources needed to support a streaming media session. The handshake sequence is asynchronous – it occurs in a particular order, and the client proceeds to the next step only when the server acknowledges that it has completed the previous one. The vulnerability results because the malformed handshake sequence causes a resource to be used before it is initialized. This causes it to fail in a catastrophic manner, and the Windows Media Unicast Service crashes as a result.
