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Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2011-1987

High
9.3/10

Summary

Array index error in Microsoft Excel 2003 SP3 and 2007 SP2; Excel in Office 2007 SP2; Excel 2010 Gold and SP1; Excel in Office 2010 Gold and SP1; Office 2004, 2008, and 2011 for Mac; Open XML File Format Converter for Mac; Excel Viewer SP2; and Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats SP2 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a crafted spreadsheet, aka "Excel Out of Bounds Array Indexing Vulnerability."

  • MEDIUM
  • NETWORK
  • NONE
  • COMPLETE
  • COMPLETE
  • COMPLETE

CWE-119 - Buffer Overflow

Buffer overflow attacks involve data transit and operations exceeding the restricted memory buffer, thereby corrupting or overwriting data in adjacent memory locations. Such overflow allows the attacker to run arbitrary code or manipulate the existing code to cause privilege escalation, data breach, denial of service, system crash and even complete system compromise. Given that languages such as C and C++ lack default safeguards against overwriting or accessing data in their memory, applications utilizing these languages are most susceptible to buffer overflows attacks.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published