Microsoft plugs a zero-day hole in Office PowerPoint as part of Patch Tuesday. The sole Microsoft security bulletin for May also addresses 13 other vulnerabilities affecting Office PowerPoint.
Microsoft
pushed out a patch May 12 to give Office PowerPoint users a shield against
ongoing attacks targeting a zero-day vulnerability.
The
fix is part of the month's sole Patch Tuesday security bulletin-a massive patch
for a total of 14 security issues in PowerPoint. The only flaw known
to be under attack is a memory
corruption vulnerability first brought to light in early April that could
permit attackers to take complete control of a compromised system.
According
to Microsoft's advisory, the bug is due to a problem that occurs when
PowerPoint reads an invalid index value in a specially crafted PowerPoint file.
The resulting error can corrupt memory and allow an attacker to execute
arbitrary code.
So
far, no active or reliable exploits of the vulnerability have been found for
Office for Mac, and Microsoft Office 2007, 2008 for Mac, Microsoft Office
PowerPoint Viewers, and Microsoft Works versions 8.5 and 9.0 do not contain the
vulnerability.
The
bulletin is only rated critical for PowerPoint 2000 Service Pack 3, as
PowerPoint 2002 and later versions have a built-in feature that prompts a user
to Open, Save or Cancel before opening a document.
The
only bug that affects all products in the affected products list is
CVE-2009-0224, another memory corruption vulnerability in the way PowerPoint
handles specially crafted PowerPoint files.
Updates
are not available for Office 2004 for Mac, Office 2008 for Mac, Open XML File Format Converter for Mac,
Microsoft Works 8.5 or Works 9.0. According to Microsoft, the company went
ahead with the bulletin because of the active exploits. The updates for the
other applications are still in development and will be released when ready.
"It
is the month of PowerPoint bugs," Dave Marcus, research and communications
director at McAfee Avert Labs, said in a statement. "Vulnerabilities in
Office applications have been a favorite attack method among cyber-crooks,
especially in stealthy attacks that seek to steal high-value intellectual
property. Trojan horse attacks often use rigged Office files that exploit
vulnerabilities in the productivity suite."
Email
Print
