Text 17405, 75 rader
Skriven 2007-04-14 09:48:08 av mike (1:379/45)
Ärende: Microsoft: Word 2007 crashes are a feature, not bug
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From: mike <mike@barkto.com>


http://www.computerpartner.nl/article.php?news=int&id=5003

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The Word 2007 bugs pegged as security vulnerabilities by an Israeli researcher
are nothing of the sort, Microsoft Corp. said Thursday. Instead, the
application crashes reported as flaws are actually by design.

The researcher who posted details earlier this week of the bugs reacted by
offering screenshots of the Word crashes and wondering why Microsoft disputed
his findings.

On Monday, Mati Aharoni of Offensive Security warned of three new flaws in Word
2007 on the Milw0rm and SecurityVulns.com security sites, and posted malformed
Word documents as proof-of-concepts. Microsoft, however, seemed unconcerned.

Late Wednesday, a company spokeswoman repeated the company's earlier contention
that the Microsoft Security Response Center's (MSRC) investigation, "found that
none of these claims demonstrate a vulnerability in Microsoft's Word 2007 or
any part of the Microsoft Office System."

When asked to clarify that statement, she acknowledged Microsoft won't classify
the flaws as security problems. Rather, the behavior of Word 2007 is a feature,
not a bug. "In fact, the behavior observed in Microsoft Word 2007 in this
instance is a by-design behavior that improves security and stability by
exiting Microsoft Word when it has run out of options to try and reliably
display a malformed Word document," the spokeswoman said.

She went on to suggest that it is no big deal if Word 2007 did crash under
those circumstances, a scenario that could lead to the loss of any unsaved
data. "The sample code in [Aharoni's] postings cause Microsoft Word to crash,
and users can restart the application to resume normal operations."

The stance was not out of character for the MSRC, which in the past has
separated bugs that allow code execution or rights elevation from those that
result in a denial-of-service-style situation. Previously, it has refused to
label some crash-inducing problems as vulnerabilities, or patch them outside of
a service pack.

That's the same position taken by David LeBlanc, one of Microsoft's secure code
gurus, and Michael Howard, the co-author of the just-released Writing Secure
Code for Vista. "You may rightfully say that crashing is always bad, and having
a server-class app background, I agree. Crashing means you made a mistake, bad
programmer, no biscuit," said LeBlanc in an MSDN blog. "However, crashing may
be the lesser of the evils in many places. The theory is that it is better to
crash, at least with client apps, than it is to be running the bad guy's shell
code."

Office 2007 uses this strategy, said LeBlanc, who, like the MSRC, objected to
classifying a denial-of-service-like result as an attack. "I really take issue
with those who would characterize a client-side crash as a denial of service,"
he said. "If you can crash my app so that I can't restart it, or have to reboot
my system, well, okay, that's a DoS. If you blew up my app, and I just don't
load that document again, big deal."

For his part, Aharoni was puzzled by media reports that claimed Microsoft
contested the bugs themselves, not that the flaws weren't to be considered true
vulnerabilities, and responded by posting screenshots of the Word 2007 crash.
"I've recieved [sic] many mails from full disclosure members confirming the
crash," he also said on his blog today. "I fully hope that Microsoft will find
the resources to figure this out."

The company said it will continue to investigate, in case earlier editions of
the word processor, which don't include code that purposefully crashes the app,
are found to vulnerable. "Our investigation into the possible impact of these
claims on other versions of Microsoft Office is continuing," said the
spokeswoman.
===

  /m

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