TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative
 

Apple Preview libFontParser SpecialEncoding Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

ZDI-10-076: April 14th, 2010

CVE ID

CVSS Score

Affected Vendors

Affected Products

    Preview

TippingPoint™ IPS Customer Protection

TippingPoint IPS customers are protected against this vulnerability by Digital Vaccine protection filter ID 9686. For further product information on the TippingPoint IPS:

Vulnerability Details

This vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable installations of Apple Preview. User interaction is required in that a target must open a malicious file or visit a malicious page.

The specific flaw exists within the routine TType1ParsingContext::SpecialEncoding() defined in libFontParser.dylib. While parsing glyphs from a PDF document, a malformed offset greater than 0x400 can result in a heap corruption which can be leveraged by an attacker to execute arbitrary code under the context of the current user.

Vendor Response

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

Disclosure Timeline

    2010-03-26 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
    2010-04-14 - Coordinated public release of advisory

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by:
    Charlie Miller