iDefense Security Advisory 02.09.10 http://labs.idefense.com/intelligence/vulnerabilities/ Feb 09, 2010 I. BACKGROUND Microsoft PowerPoint is an application used for constructing presentations, and comes with the Microsoft Office suite. For more information, see the vendor's site found at the following link. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/default.aspx II. DESCRIPTION Remote exploitation of a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.'s PowerPoint could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user. The vulnerability occurs during the parsing of two related PowerPoint record types. The first record type, the "LinkedSlideAtom" record, is used to specify collaboration information for different slides. One of the fields in this record is used to specify the number of certain records that are present in the file. The code responsible for filling the array used to store the records does not perform any bounds checking when storing elements into the array. This results in a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability. III. ANALYSIS Exploitation of this vulnerability results in the execution of arbitrary code with the privileges of the user opening the file. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker needs to convince a user to open a malicious file. If the targeted user is running PowerPoint 2000, and the "Office Document Open Confirmation Tool" is not installed, then it is possible to exploit this vulnerability directly through the browser. IV. DETECTION iDefense has confirmed the existence of this vulnerability in the following versions of PowerPoint: PowerPoint 2000 SP3 PowerPoint 2002 (XP) SP3 PowerPoint 2003 SP3 PowerPoint 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 SP1 are not affected. V. WORKAROUND iDefense is currently unaware of any workaround for this issue. VI. VENDOR RESPONSE Microsoft Corp. has released a patch which addresses this issue. Information about downloadable vendor updates can be found by clicking on the URLs shown. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS10-004.mspx VII. CVE INFORMATION The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned the name CVE-2010-0030 to this issue. This is a candidate for inclusion in the CVE list (http://cve.mitre.org/), which standardizes names for security problems. VIII. DISCLOSURE TIMELINE 07/08/2009 Initial Vendor Notification 07/08/2009 Initial Vendor Reply 02/09/2010 Coordinated Public Disclosure IX. CREDIT This vulnerability was discovered by Sean Larsson, iDefense Labs. Get paid for vulnerability research http://labs.idefense.com/methodology/vulnerability/vcp.php Free tools, research and upcoming events http://labs.idefense.com/ X. LEGAL NOTICES Copyright © 2010 iDefense, Inc. Permission is granted for the redistribution of this alert electronically. It may not be edited in any way without the express written consent of iDefense. If you wish to reprint the whole or any part of this alert in any other medium other than electronically, please e-mail customerservice@idefense.com for permission. Disclaimer: The information in the advisory is believed to be accurate at the time of publishing based on currently available information. Use of the information constitutes acceptance for use in an AS IS condition. There are no warranties with regard to this information. Neither the author nor the publisher accepts any liability for any direct, indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from use of, or reliance on, this information. _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/