Check Point Advisories

Microsoft Word Document Parsing Buffer Overflow (MS05-023; CVE-2004-0963)

Vulnerability
Protection

Check Point Reference:	CPAI-2004-186
Date Published:	13 Apr 2010
Severity:	High
Last Updated:	Tuesday 13 April, 2010
Source:
Industry Reference:	CVE-2004-0963
Protection Provided by:	Security Gateway R81, R80, R77, R75
Who is Vulnerable?
Vulnerability Description	Microsoft Word is a popular document processing product released by the Microsoft Corporation. A Word document contains values which enable the product to correctly parse the document such as length, count, offset fields and so on. Some of these values are string that represents font name, style, author of document and so on. There is a vulnerability in the way Microsoft Word parses a specially crafted Word document. An error in the conversion of a length value leads to a heap buffer overflow. In a simple attack case, the vulnerable Microsoft Word application will terminate as a result of a successful attack. The user will be prompted to acknowledge the thrown exception, after which the affected application will be shut down. In the case of a more sophisticated exploit, involving shell code injection, the behaviour of the target is entirely dependent on the intended function of the injected code.

Protection Overview

This protection will detect and block attempts to exploit this vulnerability.

In order for the protection to be activated, update your Security Gateway product to the latest IPS update. For information on how to update IPS, go to SBP-2006-05, click on Protection tab and select the version of your choice.

Security Gateway R80 / R77 / R75

In the IPS tab, click Protections and find the Microsoft Word Document Parsing Buffer Overflow (MS05-023) protection using the Search tool and Edit the protection's settings.
Install policy on all Security Gateways.

This protection's log will contain the following information:

Attack Name: Content Protection Violation.
Attack Information: Microsoft Word Document parsing buffer overflow (MS05-023)