iDefense Security Advisory 02.09.10
http://labs.idefense.com/intelligence/vulnerabilities/
Feb 09, 2010

I. BACKGROUND

Microsoft PowerPoint is an application used for constructing
presentations, and comes with the Microsoft Office suite. For more
information, see the vendor's site found at the following link.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/default.aspx

II. DESCRIPTION

Remote exploitation of a heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability in
Microsoft Corp.'s PowerPoint could allow an attacker to execute
arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user.

The vulnerability occurs during the parsing of two related PowerPoint
record types. The first record type, the "LinkedSlideAtom" record, is
used to specify collaboration information for different slides. One of
the fields in this record is used to specify the number of certain
records that are present in the file. The code responsible for filling
the array used to store the records does not perform any bounds
checking when storing elements into the array. This results in a
heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability.

III. ANALYSIS

Exploitation of this vulnerability results in the execution of arbitrary
code with the privileges of the user opening the file. To exploit this
vulnerability, an attacker needs to convince a user to open a malicious
file. If the targeted user is running PowerPoint 2000, and the "Office
Document Open Confirmation Tool" is not installed, then it is possible
to exploit this vulnerability directly through the browser.

IV. DETECTION

iDefense has confirmed the existence of this vulnerability in the
following versions of PowerPoint:

PowerPoint 2000 SP3

PowerPoint 2002 (XP) SP3

PowerPoint 2003 SP3 PowerPoint 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 SP1 are not
affected.

V. WORKAROUND

iDefense is currently unaware of any workaround for this issue.

VI. VENDOR RESPONSE

Microsoft Corp. has released a patch which addresses this issue.
Information about downloadable vendor updates can be found by clicking
on the URLs shown.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS10-004.mspx

VII. CVE INFORMATION

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project has assigned the
name CVE-2010-0030 to this issue. This is a candidate for inclusion in
the CVE list (http://cve.mitre.org/), which standardizes names for
security problems.

VIII. DISCLOSURE TIMELINE

07/08/2009  Initial Vendor Notification
07/08/2009  Initial Vendor Reply
02/09/2010  Coordinated Public Disclosure

IX. CREDIT

This vulnerability was discovered by Sean Larsson, iDefense Labs.

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X. LEGAL NOTICES

Copyright © 2010 iDefense, Inc.

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Disclaimer: The information in the advisory is believed to be accurate
at the time of publishing based on currently available information. Use
of the information constitutes acceptance for use in an AS IS condition.
 There are no warranties with regard to this information. Neither the
author nor the publisher accepts any liability for any direct,
indirect, or consequential loss or damage arising from use of, or
reliance on, this information.