Product:
Office Excel
Summary
Microsoft Office Excel 2002, 2003, and 2007 along with various Mac versions and viewers are vulnerable to a memory corruption issue. This vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code through a specially crafted spreadsheet. The issue arises from an invalid cbHdrData size element in a FEATHEADER record, affecting pointer offsets.
Details
| Severity | Base Score | CVE |
|---|---|---|
| HIGH | 7.8 | CVE-2009-3129 |
Exploitation
To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must create a malicious spreadsheet file that contains a specially crafted FEATHEADER record. When the victim opens this file in the affected versions of Excel, the invalid cbHdrData size element can lead to memory corruption, allowing the attacker to execute arbitrary code on the victim’s machine. User interaction is required to open the malicious file.
Affected Products
- Office Excel 2002 SP3: Vulnerable to memory corruption via crafted spreadsheets.
- Office Excel 2003 SP3: Same vulnerability as 2002 SP3.
- Office Excel 2007 SP1 and SP2: Affected by the same memory corruption issue.
- Office 2004 and 2008 for Mac: Vulnerable to the same exploit.
- Open XML File Format Converter for Mac: Also affected by this vulnerability.
- Office Excel Viewer 2003 SP3: Vulnerable to the same memory corruption issue.
- Office Excel Viewer SP1 and SP2: Affected by the same vulnerability.
- Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats SP1 and SP2: Vulnerable to this exploit.
Mitigation
To mitigate this vulnerability, users should apply the updates provided by Microsoft as per their instructions. Keeping software up to date is crucial in protecting against known vulnerabilities.