Microsoft Word Document Parsing Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Secunia Advisory: SA12758 Print Advisory
Release Date: 2004-10-07

Critical:
Highly critical
Impact: DoS
System access
Where: From remote
Solution Status: Unpatched

Software: Microsoft Office 2000
Microsoft Office XP
Microsoft Word 2000
Microsoft Word 2002

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Description:
HexView has discovered a vulnerability in Microsoft Word, which can be
exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) and
potentially compromise a user's system.

The vulnerability is caused due to an input validation error within
the parsing of document files and may lead to a stack-based buffer
overflow.

This can be exploited to crash the process when the user opens a
specially crafted document. However, due to the nature of the problem,
execution of arbitrary code may potentially also be possible, though
it has not been proven.

The vulnerability has been confirmed in Microsoft Word 2000, but has
also been reported in Microsoft Word 2002.

Solution:
Open trusted documents only.

For Internet Explorer users, documents on web sites can be opened
automatically in the browser, unless the security level for the
"Internet" security zone is set to "High" or the "File download"
setting has been disabled.

Provided and/or discovered by:
HexView


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upon, comes from third party unless stated otherwise.

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issued by security research groups, vendors, and others.


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http://secunia.com/advisories/12758/