Threat Center Security News Microsoft Excel Header Parsing
Microsoft Excel Header Parsing Print E-mail
Written by Rebecca Mints   
Friday, 01 February 2008 13:51

Risk
High

Date Discovered
1/15/2008 12:00:00 AM

Description
Microsoft Excel is prone to a remote code-execution vulnerability. An attacker may exploit this issue to execute arbitrary code in the context of the affected application.

Failed exploit attempts will likely result in denial-of-service conditions. Reportedly, the issue affects the following versions: Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Service Pack 2 Microsoft Office Excel Viewer 2003 Microsoft Office Excel 2002 Microsoft Office Excel 2000 Microsoft Excel 2004 for Mac. The following versions are not affected: Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Service Pack 1 Microsoft Excel 2008 for Mac Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Service Pack 3. Few details regarding this vulnerability are available. The vendor is investigating the issue and will be releasing updates. We will update this BID when more information emerges.

Technologies Affected
Microsoft Excel 2003 SP2
Microsoft Excel Viewer 2003
Microsoft Excel 2004 for Mac
Microsoft Excel 2000
Microsoft Excel 2002

Recommendations
Do not accept or execute files from untrusted or unknown sources.
Malicious media files may be sent via email, hosted on a web page, or sent through instant messaging or other means. Never accept or open any files that originate from an untrusted source.
Do not follow links provided by unknown or untrusted sources.
Web users should be cautious about following links to sites that are provided by unfamiliar or suspicious sources. Filtering HTML from emails may help remove a possible vector for transmitting malicious links to users.
Implement multiple redundant layers of security.
Since this issue may be leveraged to execute code, we recommend memory-protection schemes, such as nonexecutable stack/heap configurations and randomly mapped memory segments. This tactic may complicate exploits of memory-corruption vulnerabilities.

Run all software as a nonprivileged user with minimal access rights.
To reduce the impact of latent vulnerabilities, always run nonadministrative software as an unprivileged user with minimal access rights.

 

Source: TrendMicro 

 

WTW Threat Level