(PT-2013-73) Positive Technologies Security Advisory
XML External Entities Resolution vulnerability in Microsoft Office Word
Vulnerable software
Microsoft Office Word
Version: 2007 SP3 and earlier; 2003 SP3 and earlier
Microsoft Office
Version: 2007 SP3 and earlier; 2003 SP3 and earlier
Microsoft Word Viewer
Version: 2007 SP3 and earlier
Link:
http://microsoft.com/
Severity level
Severity level: Medium
Impact: Internal Network Resources and File System Access, Denial of Service
Access Vector: Remote
CVSS v2:
Base Score: 5.8
Vector: (AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:P)
CVE: CVE-2013-3160
Software description
Microsoft Office Word is a commercial word processor designed by Microsoft.
Vulnerability description
The specialists of the Positive Research center have detected an XML External Entities Resolution vulnerability in Microsoft Office Word and Word Viewer.
The vulnerability is possible due to unsafe parsing of XML external entities. If an attacker makes a victim open a specially crafted XML document, Microsoft Office Word installed on the victim's system will automatically send the contents of local or remote resource to the attacker's server provided that the use of the remote XSD was approved by the user. It also makes possible to conduct denial of service attacks.
How to fix
Use vendor's advisory:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-072
Advisory status
26.11.2012 - Vendor gets vulnerability details
10.09.2013 - Vendor releases fixed version and details
09.10.2013 - Public disclosure
Credits
The vulnerability was detected by Timur Yunusov, Alexey Osipov and Ilya Karpov, Positive Research Center (Positive Technologies Company)
References
http://en.securitylab.ru/lab/PT-2013-73
Reports on the vulnerabilities previously discovered by Positive Research:
http://www.ptsecurity.com/research/advisory/
http://en.securitylab.ru/lab/
About Positive Technologies
Positive Technologies www.ptsecurity.com is among the key players in the IT security market in Russia.
The principal activities of the company include the development of integrated tools for information security monitoring (MaxPatrol); providing IT security consulting services and technical support; development of the Securitylab leading Russian information security portal.
Among the clients of Positive Technologies, there are more than 40 state enterprises, more than 50 banks and financial organizations, 20 telecommunication companies, more than 40 plant facilities, as well as IT, service and retail companies from Russia, the CIS countries, the Baltic States, China, Ecuador, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Iran, Israel, Japan, Mexico, the Republic of South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and the USA.
Positive Technologies is a team of highly skilled developers, advisers and experts with years of vast hands-on experience. The company specialists possess professional titles and certificates; they are the members of various international societies and are actively involved in the IT security field development.
Get in touch
will contact you shortly