Nanika has discovered a bug in Microsoft PowerPoint, which can be exploited by malicious people to crash the application.

The bug is caused due to a NULL pointer dereference error when processing a PowerPoint presentation containing a container object with an invalid "position" value that is larger than the container's record length.

Originally, Microsoft stated, contrary to Secunia's internal findings, that successful exploitation could allow execution of arbitrary code. However, Microsoft has now officially retracted this statement and concludes in thread with Secunia that it's only possible to crash the application.

The bug is confirmed in Microsoft PowerPoint 2003. Other versions may also be affected.

Solution
Do not open untrusted Office documents.
Further details available to Secunia VIM customers

Provided and/or discovered by
Nanika

Changelog
Further details available to Secunia VIM customers

Original Advisory
Microsoft:
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/10/12/poc-published-for-ms-office-2003-powerpoint.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/11/10/follow-up-information-on-weblog-posting-about-poc-published-for-ms-office-2003-powerpoint.aspx

Deep Links
Links available to Secunia VIM customers