TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative
 

Microsoft PowerPoint Malformed Slide Notes Rebuilding Vulnerability

ZDI-06-032: October 10th, 2006

CVE ID

Affected Vendors

Affected Products

    File Format Vulnerability

TippingPoint™ IPS Customer Protection

TippingPoint IPS customers are protected against this vulnerability by Digital Vaccine protection filter ID 4770. For further product information on the TippingPoint IPS:

Vulnerability Details

This vulnerability allows attackers to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable installations of Microsoft Office. Exploitation requires that the attacker coerce the target user into opening a malicious .PPT file.

The specific flaw exists during the parsing of a malformed slide notes field within the PowerPoint presentation. When PowerPoint attempts to rebuild the malformed section, a pointer calculation is made based on attacker controlled data from within the file. This pointer is later dereferenced and can lead to arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the user who opened the malicious file.

Vendor Response

Microsoft has issued an update to correct this vulnerability. More details can be found at:

Disclosure Timeline

    2006-06-14 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
    2006-10-10 - Coordinated public release of advisory

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by:
    Arnaud Dovi aka 'class101', http://heapoverflow.com