Technical Description

A vulnerability has been identified in IBM Lotus Notes, which could be exploited by attackers to compromise a vulnerable system. This issue is caused by an integer overflow error in the File Viewer for Excel (xlssr.dll) when processing XLS documents containing a malformed Shared String Table (SST) record, which could be exploited by attackers to crash an affected application or execute arbitrary code by tricking a user into double-clicking a specially crafted attachment and selecting "View".

Affected Products

IBM Lotus Notes versions 8.5.x
IBM Lotus Notes versions 8.0x
IBM Lotus Notes versions 7.x
IBM Lotus Notes versions 6.x
IBM Lotus Notes versions 5.x

Solution

Obtain the patch by opening a service request with IBM Support :
http://www.ibm.com/software/support/probsub.html

Or disable the affected viewer "xlssr.dll" :
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21396492

References

http://www.vupen.com/english/advisories/2009/2389
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21396492
http://labs.idefense.com/intelligence/vulnerabilities/display.php?id=823

Credits

Vulnerability reported by Joshua J. Drake (iDefense Labs).

ChangeLog

2009-08-25 : Initial release
2009-08-26 : Updated Advisory

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