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Security Advisory: CT09-01-2007

=======================================================
Microsoft Outlook Advanced Find - Remote Code Execution

Advisory Date: 11th January 2007

Severity: Critical
Impact: Remote System Access
Solution Status: Vendor Patch

CVE Reference: CVE-2007-0034

Affected Software

Microsoft Outlook 2000
Microsoft Outlook 2002
Microsoft Outlook 2003

1. OVERVIEW
   ===========

Microsoft Outlook is a popular personal communication manager that
provides end users with a unified place to manage e-mail, calendar
and contact information.

As part of its standard offering, Outlook also includes an Advanced
Search facility (Finder.exe) enabling end-users to query any aspect
of their repository information.

Unfortunately, it transpires that Outlook/Finder is susceptible to
a remote Buffer overflow vulnerability, when processing the contents
of a specially crafted Office Saved Search (.oss) file.

2. TECHNICAL NARRATIVE
   ======================

The issue in question stems from a simple oversight in the design of
an intrinsic string manipulation function, which attempts to copy
1024 bytes of user supplied Unicode content, to a pre-allocated buffer
of only 512 bytes (even though sufficient length checks are invoked).

As the destination buffer is unable to accommodate the additional data,
the net result is that of a classic stack overflow condition, in which
Instruction Pointer (EIP) control is gained via one of several
available return addresses.

3. EXPLOITATION
   ===============

As with most file parsing vulnerabilities, the aforementioned issue
will require a certain degree of social engineering to achieve successful
exploitation.

However, Office Saved Searches (.oss) file types share very similar
display characteristics to that of harmless looking e-mail icons.
As such, end-users could be fooled into thinking the attachment is
a non-threatening mail forward.

4. VENDOR RESPONSE
   ==================

The vendor security bulletin and corresponding patches are available
at the following location:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS07-003.mspx

5. DISCLOSURE ANALYSIS
   ======================

12/05/2006 Preliminary Vendor notification.
24/05/2006 Vulnerability confirmed by Vendor
16/10/2006 Public Disclosure Deferred by Vendor
09/01/2007 Public release.

Total Time to Fix: 7 months 29 Days (243 days in total)

6. CREDIT
   =========

The vulnerability was discovered by Stuart Pearson of Computer Terrorism

========================
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