Virtual Event Today: Supply Chain Security Summit - Register Now

Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Vulnerabilities

SoftMaker Office Vulnerabilities Allow Code Execution via Malicious Documents

Vulnerabilities discovered by Cisco Talos researchers in SoftMaker Office can be exploited for arbitrary code execution by creating malicious documents and tricking victims into opening them.

Vulnerabilities discovered by Cisco Talos researchers in SoftMaker Office can be exploited for arbitrary code execution by creating malicious documents and tricking victims into opening them.

A German software developer, SoftMaker Software GmbH offers individuals and enterprises a popular office software suite that includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and database software components. The firm’s SoftMaker Office suite provides support for common and internal document file formats.

The recently discovered vulnerabilities impact TextMaker, a component of the SoftMaker Office suite designed to deliver a complete set of word-processing capabilities. According to Talos, each of the flaws can be exploited for arbitrary code execution in the context of the targeted application.

The first of the issues, CVE-2020-13544, is a sign extension bug that affects the document-parsing functionality of TextMaker (SoftMaker Office 2021).

“A specially crafted document can cause the document parser to sign-extend a length used to terminate a loop, which can later result in the loop’s index being used to write outside the bounds of a heap buffer during the reading of file data,” Cisco Talos explains.

Tracked as CVE-2020-13545, the second vulnerability is a signed conversion flaw in the same document-parsing functionality of the application.

An attacker can craft a document to cause the document parser to miscalculate a length when allocating a buffer, which will cause the application to write outside the buffer’s bounds, leading to a heap-based memory corruption.

SoftMaker Office 2021’s TextMaker was also found to be affected by an integer overflow vulnerability. Tracked as CVE-2020-13546, it results in the application writing outside a buffer with a miscalculated length.

Assessed with a CVSS score of 8.8, all three vulnerabilities are now fixed. The bugs were identified in SoftMaker Office TextMaker 2021, revision 1014, and were reported to the vendor in early October.

Related: Remotely Exploitable DoS Vulnerabilities Found in Allen-Bradley Adapter

Related: Cisco Discloses Details of Chrome, Firefox Vulnerabilities

Related: Zoom Patches Two Serious Vulnerabilities Found by Cisco Researchers

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

Application Security

Drupal released updates that resolve four vulnerabilities in Drupal core and three plugins.

Vulnerabilities

Apple has released updates for macOS, iOS and Safari and they all include a WebKit patch for a zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-23529.

Cloud Security

VMware vRealize Log Insight vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to take full control of a target system.

Application Security

A CSRF vulnerability in the source control management (SCM) service Kudu could be exploited to achieve remote code execution in multiple Azure services.

IoT Security

Lexmark warns of a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability impacting over 120 printer models, for which PoC code has been published.

Vulnerabilities

GoAnywhere MFT users warned about a zero-day remote code injection exploit that can be targeted directly from the internet