Software Engineering Institute

OpenOffice.org is an office suite that is available for multiple operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Apple Mac OS X, and BSD. It includes components such as a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation tool. It features the ability for documents to contain Java applets in addition to static data content.

The OpenOffice.org team has stated that there is a vulnerability in the 1.1 and 2.0 versions of OpenOffice.org that may allow some Java applets full access to the host operating system with the privileges of the user running OpenOffice.org.

To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would need to convince a user to open a document with a specially crafted Java applet. If successful, the attacker could use the java applet to access the operating system with the privileges of the user who opened the document.

A malicious Java applet could change, delete, transmit, overwrite, and read data on the affected computer. It may also be possible for an attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code.

Upgrade
See the Systems Affected section of this document for information about specific vendors. Users who compile OpenOffice.org from source or get their binaries directly from OpenOffice.org are encouraged to upgrade to version 1.1.5 or 2.0.3.

Workarounds

Disable Java Applets
Disabling Java applets in OpenOffice documents will remove exposure to this vulnerability. The security advisory Sun Alert 102475 provides instructions on how to disable Java applets.