Skip to main content

Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

CVE-2012-2543

Severity High
Score 9.3/10

Summary

Stack-based buffer overflow in Microsoft Excel 2007 SP2 and SP3 and 2010 SP1; Office 2011 for Mac; Excel Viewer; and Office Compatibility Pack SP2 and SP3 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a crafted spreadsheet, aka "Excel Stack Overflow 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