Microsoft Office Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Overview

» IDS/IPS Signatures

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iPolicy Networks Security Advisory


Date Discovered:	03/11/2008
Severity:	High
Applications Affected:	Microsoft Office 2000 SP3 Microsoft Office XP SP3 Microsoft Office 2003 SP2 Microsoft Office 2003 SP3 Microsoft Office Excel Viewer 2003 Microsoft Office Excel Viewer 2003 SP3 Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac

Synopsis

A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the way Microsoft Office processes malformed Office files. An attacker could exploit the vulnerability by creating a malformed Office file which could be included as an e-mail attachment, or hosted on a specially crafted or compromised Web site.

Recommended Actions

Update the patches as guided by vendor at :
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-016.mspx

Threat Analysis

The vulnerability is caused by an allocation error when Microsoft Office opens a specially crafted Office file. The error may corrupt system memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code.

An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code as the logged-on user. If a user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker could take complete control of the affected system. An attacker could then install programs, view, change, delete data, or create new accounts with full user rights.

References

http://www.cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-0118

Write-up by: Aditya Chaturvedi

Security Sites

“iPolicy is one of the most visionary firewall vendors in the firewall Magic Quadrant. Its architecture of a central session processing engine and multiple content blades that are able to block based on signatures, rules and so on is the closest to the network security ideal.”

Greg Young, John Pescatore
Magic Quadrant for Network Firewalls, 2H04, Gartner

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