TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative
 

Microsoft Office Excel BIFF File Format Parsing Stack Overflow Vulnerability

ZDI-08-068: October 14th, 2008

CVE ID

Affected Vendors

Affected Products

TippingPoint™ IPS Customer Protection

TippingPoint IPS customers are protected against this vulnerability by Digital Vaccine protection filter ID 6465. 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. Exploitation requires that the victim to open the malformed BIFF (.xls) document.

The specific flaw exists within the parsing of the BIFF file format used by Microsoft Excel. During the processing of a malformed record, user-supplied data is copied into a stack-based buffer using a size that is calculated using contents from the record.

Vendor Response

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

Disclosure Timeline

    2008-05-23 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
    2008-10-14 - Coordinated public release of advisory

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by:
    wushi & ling of team509