Vulnerabilities closed in OpenOffice, StarOffice

Flaws patched in TIFF parsing code.

Security researchers at

iDefense

revealed last week that

OpenOffice

version 2.0.4 and earlier versions are vulnerable to maliciously crafted TIFF files, which can be delivered in email attachments, published on websites or shared using peer-to-peer software.

According to

iDefense

, ‘When parsing the TIFF directory entries for certain tags, the parser uses untrusted values from the file to calculate the amount of memory to allocate. By providing specially crafted values, an integer overflow occurs in this calculation. This results in the allocation of a buffer of insufficient size, which in turn leads to a heap overflow.’ The full description can be found at the

iDefense

website

here

.

The latest release of the

OpenOffice

software – version 2.3, released 17 September, is not affected by the flaw.

Since the flaw was revealed,

Sun

, whose

StarOffice

software is based on

OpenOffice

, has issued updates to patch the same vulnerability in

StarOffice

and

StarSuite

6, 7 and 8 on

Solaris

,

Linux

and

Windows

. Users are advised to install the update – links to which can be found from the


Sun

security blog

– immediately.

Virus Bulletin magazine carries a two-part article by security researcher Eric Filiol on the security vulnerabilities and viral risks of the

OpenOffice

suite. Part one was published in the

September 2007 issue

of the magazine, with part two due to appear in October issue (publication date 1 October 2007). The magazine is available to subscribers only. Subscription information can be found

here

.

Posted on 26 September 2007 by

Virus Bulletin