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

[Alexander Sotirov <asotirov () determina com>]

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