Software Engineering Institute

OpenOffice.org is a free office suite that is available for multiple operating systems.

Windows Metafile (WMF) is a vector graphics format that was designed by Microsoft for Windows 3.0. A newer version of WMF, known as Enhanced Metafile (EMF) was designed for 32-bit operating systems.

OpenOffice.org supports importing and exporting to WMF and EMF files. There are multiple errors within the handling of the EMR_POLYPOLYGON, EMR_POLYPOLYGON16, and META_ESCAPE records that may result in a buffer overflow. An attacker may be able to exploit these vulnerabilities by convincing a user to open a specially crafted WMF or EMF file that triggers the overflow.

Note that Sun StarOffice versions 6, 7, and 8 are also vulnerable.

A remote unauthenticated attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system.

Upgrade
OpenOffice.org has issued an update to address these issues in version 2.0.4. The OpenOffice team has reported that this issue does not affect version 2.1. The update is available for all operating systems supported by the OpenOffice.org team.

StarOffice users and administrators should see the Sunsolve support site for more details about available updates..

Do not run OpenOffice or StarOffice with superuser privileges
Running OpenOffice or StarOffice with a non-privileged user account may mitigate the affects of this vulnerability.