dH team & SECURITY.NNOV: A variant of "Word Mail Merge" vulnerability

From: ERRor (errorat_private)
Date: Tue May 14 2002 - 01:26:30 PDT

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    Original version of this advisory:
    http://www.security.nnov.ru/advisories/mailmerge.asp
    
    Title:                     A variant of "Word Mail Merge" vulnerability
    Authors:                   ERRor, 3APA3A
    Date:                      May, 03 2002
    Affected:                  Office 97, 2000, XP
    Vendor:                    Microsoft
    Risk:                      Average to high
    Remote:                    for Office 2000 SR1a and prior
    Exploitable:               Yes
    Vendor notified:           February, 12 2002
    
    Intro:
    
    All  details  on  this  issue may be found in [1]. Original advisory [2]
    about  Word  Mail  Merge  vulnerability  was  posted by Georgi Guninski.
    Microsoft  released  an  advisory  and  fix  [3]  included into SR1a for
    Microsoft Office.
    
    Problem:
    
    ERRor <errorat_private> discovered the way Microsoft fixed the problem
    is  weak  and  it's  still  possible  to  exploit  this  problem. 3APA3A
    <3APA3Aat_private>  found  a  remote  exploitation  scenario  for
    Office 2000 SR1a + Outlook Express.
    
    Description:
    
    Microsoft decided to disallow dotted UNC paths (like \\111.111.111.111\)
    for merge documents as a fix. It's still possible to use any absolute or
    relative  paths  to  make word document to open macro silently in Office
    97,  2000  and  XP.  This  vulnerability  can  be  remotely exploited if
    attacker  can  put both Word and Access documents into the same location
    or  to  put Access document into known location (for example to put both
    files  into  same  Internet Explorer cache folder). Access file may have
    any  extension  (.wav,  .html, .txt) it doesn't matter. Microsoft Office
    2000  SR1a  +  SP2  and Microsoft Office XP + SP1 do not allow Access to
    open  files from Temporary Internet Files folder, it makes it impossible
    to exploit this vulnerability via Outlook Express.
    
    Exploitation:
    
    It's  possible  to  exploit  this  vulnerability  locally  or via social
    Engineering  (for  example  to  craft an archive of 3 files: readme.doc,
    setup.dat  and  setup.exe where setup.exe is trojan and setup.dat is MDB
    file  launching  setup.exe,  if  user opens readme.doc setup.exe will be
    started  automatically)  Simple extract [4] and open expl.doc - calc.exe
    will  be  started.
    
    Because  Outlooks  Express and Internet Explorer open .doc files without
    warning it's possible to exploit this vulnerability remotely [5] without
    user's intervention. Exploit works as follow:
     1. Both DOC and MDB files are attached with .doc extension
     2.  They are referenced via IFRAME tag. It makes both files to be saved
     into same cache folder and launched in MS Word.
     3. expl.doc opens exploit.doc and exploit.doc starts calc.exe
    For  some  unknown reason Internet Explorer 6.0 strips 2 last characters
    from filename in cache, so there is different .eml for Internet Explorer
    6.0.
    
    Vendor:
    
    Microsoft  recommends  to  install  SP2 for Office 2000. It fixes remote
    exploitation scenario via Outlook Express, but not local issue.
    
    References:
    
    1. Microsoft Word Mail Merge vulnerability
       http://www.security.nnov.ru/search/news.asp?binid=415
    2. Georgi  Guninski,  MS  Word  and MS Access vulnerability - executing
       arbitrary programs, may be exploited by IE/Outlook
       http://www.security.nnov.ru/search/document.asp?docid=518
    3. Microsoft Security Bulletin (MS00-071)
       Patch Available for "Word Mail Merge" Vulnerability
       http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/fq00-071.asp
    4. Mail merge vulnerability local POC
       http://www.security.nnov.ru/files/mailmerge/2files.zip
    5. Mail merge vulnerability Outlook Express POC
       http://www.security.nnov.ru/files/mailmerge/2mails.zip
    



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