TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative
 

(0day) Microsoft Office Excel Office Art Object Parsing Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

ZDI-11-041: 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 11046. 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 specific flaw exists within the way the application parses an Office Art record within a Microsoft Excel Document. Specifically, when parsing an office art object record, if an error occurs, the application will add a stray reference to an element which is part of a linked list. When receiving a window message, the application will proceed to navigate this linked list. This will access a method from the malformed object which can lead to code execution under the context of the application.

Vendor Response

Microsoft states:

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


Disclosure Timeline

    2010-06-30 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
    2011-02-07 - Coordinated public release of advisory

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by:
    Anonymous