On 3/22/2012 9:46 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
Here is my personal assessment around the CVE-2012-003 that was announced
concurrent with a patch release for OpenOffice 3.3.0 today.
First, the vulnerability is related to use of ODF 1.2 document format in a
manner that causes information from the user's computer to be covertly accessed
and captured inside the document when it is saved. (If it is not saved, there
is no harm. If it is saved as ODF 1.0/1.1, there might also be no harm,
although this case requires some testing to confirm.)
As was reported, it is relatively easy to craft an ODF 1.2 document that can
exercise the exploit when opened by a vulnerable application.
THE EXTENT OF THE VULNERABILITY
LibreOffice reported CVE-2012-0037 today concurrent with the agreed lifting of
the embargo.
My understanding is that later (since January) LO 3.4.x releases have the fix
as do the LO 3.5.x releases and release candidates. Consult the
LibreOffice.org site and blog for details.
All LibreOffice releases preceding those identified as repaired remain
vulnerable.
The patched versions of OO.o 3.3.0 and Oracle OO.o-dev 3.4, are free of the
vulnerability. The latest (since March 1) Apache OpenOffice developer previews
are free of the vulnerability.
All previous OpenOffice.org releases back to OO.o 3.0 presumably have the
vulnerability (since that was the start of claimed ODF 1.2 support). Any
unpatched recent versions will continue to have the vulnerability until patched
or replaced, of course.
OTHER RELEASES/PRODUCTS THAT DO NOT HAVE THE VULNERABILITY
Pre-3.0 versions of OO.o should not have the vulnerability.
Lotus Symphony has never had the vulnerability.
Microsoft Office 2007/2010 ODF support does not have the vulnerability.
Microsoft Office converters from ODF to Office (as used with Office 2003, for
example) do not have the vulnerability.
I suspect that documents containing the exploit can't pass through Google Docs,
but I haven't tested it. I doubt that they are vulnerable though.
Some other supporters of ODF format have indicated that their products do not
support the feature of ODF 1.2 format that is the carrier of the exploit. The
suppliers of such products should be consulted directly for confirmation.
DOCUMENTS NOT HAVING THE EXPLOIT
Documents saved as ODF 1.0/1.1 should not preserve any exploit. That is a way
to scrub suspicious documents and templates so long as any loss of fidelity is
tolerable when going down-level and back.
Documents saved as .doc, .rtf, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx, etc., and then
brought back from those formats should not contain any exploit. This only
works if any loss of fidelity is tolerable of course. Note that it is not
necessary to have Microsoft Office. Using the converters that are part of
OpenOffice.org, Apache OpenOffice, and LibreOffice is sufficient.
Saved HMTL documents will, likewise, be stripped of any exploit. Saved PDF documents
will also be exploit-free so long as the form of PDF that preserves the original ODF
document as an "attachment" is not used.
WHO IS VULNERABLE AND WHAT TO DO IF YOU THINK YOU ARE
The exploit requires that you open and use a document or template from an
unreliable or unknown source (or that someone you do trust has managed to do
this and sent the result to you). The captured material is no use if the
resulting saved document is not returned to someone who knows to look for it.
In some forms of the exploit, once information is captured, there are no
further captures. However, the captured content can be passed on through
subsequent revisions and recipients. That is, there may be perpetuation of
covertly-captured residue.
Fortunately, the exploit involves a feature that is not required for the
correct processing of most ODF documents (which is also why success of the
exploit is easily unnoticed). So extinguishing the feature from a document,
while heavy handed, rarely does any harm.
If you have any doubt concerning ODF documents in your possession, you can
exercise some of the remedies in the previous section, involving saving the
document in different formats and then re-opening it form those formats.
If you are unable to patch your system or want to ensure that documents you
already have do not carry any exploit, you can also clean up the ODF package
using a Zip utility. It is also possible to produce a utility that can
automatically scrub most ODF packages of any potentially-suspect content.
- Dennis
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To Users: Where does one get the patch? I mean just in case?:-)
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