Fortinet Discovers Microsoft Office Web Components Remote Memory Corruption Vulnerability

Summary

Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs has discovered remote memory corruption vulnerability in Microsoft Office Web Components.

Solutions

FortiGuard Labs released the following FortiGate IPS signature which covers this specific vulnerability:

MS.Office.Web.Components.Memory.Corruption
Released Jan 15, 2009
Users should apply the solution provided by Microsoft.

Additional Information

A remote attacker could craft a malicious HTML document which exploits the Internet Explorer. The vulnerability lies in the default ActiveX Control installed by the Microsoft Office. A crafted object may be created and passed to a method of this control that will cause memory corruption in the Internet Explorer. After the corruption has occurred, a few specific actions will cause Internet Explorer to cause remote code execution through a call instruction.

Acknowledgement

Haifei Li of Fortinet's FortiGuard Global Security Research Team.

IPS Subscription

Fortinet customers who subscribe to Fortinet's intrusion prevention (IPS) service should be protected against this vulnerability with the appropriate configuration parameters in place. Fortinet's IPS service is one component of FortiGuard Subscription Services, which also offer comprehensive solutions such as antivirus, Web content filtering and antispam capabilities. These services enable protection against threats on both application and network layers. FortiGuard Services are continuously updated by FortiGuard Labs, which enables Fortinet to deliver a combination of multi-layered security intelligence and true zero-day protection from new and emerging threats. These updates are delivered to all FortiGate, FortiMail and FortiClient products. Fortinet strictly follows responsible disclosure guidelines to ensure optimum protection during a threat's lifecycle.