OpenOffice Confirms Buffer Overflow Flaw

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The OpenOffice.org community on Tuesday confirmed the existence of a potentially serious heap-overflow vulnerability in its freely distributed office productivity suite.

The flaw affects OpenOffice Version 1.1.4 and prior and OpenOffice Version 2.0-dev and prior and could put users at risk of code execution attacks.

OpenOffice.org community manager Louis Suarez-Potts confirmed that the vulnerability was discovered in the “StgCompObjStream::Load()” function and occurs when handling a specially crafted “.doc” file.

This could potentially be exploited by attackers to compromise a vulnerable system by convincing a user to open a malicious document with an unpatched application.

“We learned of this March 31 and will be working on it immediately. A patch is ready but it is still going through [quality assurance] testing,” Suarez-Potts told eWEEK.com. The update is expected to be available for general download within two days.

/zimages/4/28571.gifClick here to read more about buffer overflows in Cyrus Mail Server.

The OpenOffice.org office productivity suite is compatible with Microsoft Office files and includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics and drawing program, and provides access to popular databases.

/zimages/4/28571.gifTo read more about OpenOffice 2.0, click here.

OpenOffice.org is based on the code from an older version of StarOffice that was acquired and made open source by Sun Microsystems Inc.

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