TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative
 

Microsoft Excel Feature11/Feature12 Record Trusted Counter Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

ZDI-12-184: November 15th, 2012

CVE ID

CVSS Score

Affected Vendors

Affected Products

TippingPoint™ IPS Customer Protection

TippingPoint IPS customers are protected against this vulnerability by Digital Vaccine protection filter ID 12612. For further product information on the TippingPoint IPS:

Vulnerability Details


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

The specific flaw exists within Excel's parsing of Feature11/Feature12 records. The process trusts a supplied counter value without validating its size and proceeds to use it within a copy operation to the stack. An attacker can abuse this to execute arbitrary code under the context of the user running Excel.

Vendor Response

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

Disclosure Timeline

    2012-07-24 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
    2012-11-15 - Coordinated public release of advisory

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by:
    Anonymous