bugtraq - Re: The newest Word flaw is due to malformed data structure handling

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Message-ID: <25499362.1192261166120050798.JavaMail.juha-matti.laurio@netti.fi>
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 20:14:10 +0200 (EET)
From: Juha-Matti Laurio <juha-matti.laurio@...ti.fi>
To: Alexander Sotirov <asotirov@...ermina.com>
Cc: bugtraq@...urityfocus.com, full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: The newest Word flaw is due to malformed data structure
 handling

And without any reasonable technical details it is very difficult to give a title field for the vulnerability.
Several advisories using titles like Word Unspecified Code Execution Vulnerability or Word Code Execution Vulnerability #2, #3 are not the trend we want.
Related to the newest Word issue US-CERT assigned a good title:
Microsoft Word malformed pointer vulnerability
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/996892

- Juha-Matti


Alexander Sotirov <asotirov@...ermina.com> wrote: 
> Juha-Matti Laurio wrote:
> > Related to the newest MS Word 0-day
> > http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/12/10/new-report-of-a-word-zero-day.aspx
> > 
> > US-CERT Vulnerability Note VU#166700 released today lists the following
> > new technical detail:
> > 
> > "Microsoft Word fails to properly handle malformed data structures
> > allowing memory corruption to occur."
> > http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/166700
> 
> I appreciate your efforts to keep the community informed, but these kinds of
> "technical details" are completely useless. It's not your fault, this has been a
> long-standing problem with the information from coming from the likes of CERT
> and MSRC.
> 
> Almost all Office vulnerabilities (and security issues in file parsers in
> general) are a result of "malfromed data structures allowing memory corruption
> to occur". Repeating this statement for every Word bug doesn't tell us anything new.
> 
> Descriptions of vulnerabilities, especially ones that are found in the wild,
> should include enough information to allow researchers to uniquely identify the
> new vulnerability and differentiate it from all other bugs, both known ones and
> 0days. Without that level of detail, you end up with this:
> http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/443288
> 
> 
> Alex