TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative
 

(0day) Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Invalid Object Type Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

ZDI-11-040: February 7th, 2011

CVE ID

CVSS Score

Affected Vendors

Affected Products

TippingPoint™ IPS Customer Protection

TippingPoint IPS customers are protected against this vulnerability by Digital Vaccine protection filter ID 10818. For further product information on the TippingPoint IPS:

Vulnerability Details

This vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable installations of Microsoft Office Excel. User interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability in that the target must visit a malicious page or open a malicious file.

The flaw occurs when parsing a document with a malformed Excel document. When parsing an office art object, the application will add the malformed object to a linked list. After this addition, the application will process each element in the linked list. When handling the object in question, the application will explicitly trust a function pointer off of this object. If an attacker can substitute an object of their choosing in place of this function pointer, code execution under the context of the application can be achieved.

Vendor Response

Microsoft states:

Patched April 12, 2011
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms11-021.mspx


Disclosure Timeline

    2010-07-20 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
    2011-02-07 - Coordinated public release of advisory

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by:
    Anonymous