TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative
 

Microsoft Office PowerPoint Notes Container Heap Overflow Vulnerability

ZDI-09-020: May 12th, 2009

CVE ID

Affected Vendors

Affected Products

TippingPoint™ IPS Customer Protection

TippingPoint IPS customers are protected against this vulnerability by Digital Vaccine protection filter ID 8083, 8084. 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's PowerPoint. User interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability in that the target must open up a malicious file.

The vulnerability exists within the parsing of certain structures inside a Notes container. During population of a C++ object when reading the Notes container, Powerpoint incorrectly reads more data than was allocated for overwriting a function pointer for the object which is later used in a call from mso.dll. Successful exploitation can lead to remote code execution under the credentials of the currently logged in user.

Vendor Response

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

Disclosure Timeline

    2008-06-25 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
    2009-05-12 - Coordinated public release of advisory

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by:
    ling&wushi of team509