Secunia

Multiple vulnerabilities have been reported in Microsoft Office Word, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system.

1) An error when processing List File Override (LFO) entries can be exploited to corrupt memory via a specially crafted Word file.

2) An integer overflow error exists when calculating the space required for the specified number of points in a polyline or polygon. This can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow during parsing of objects in Rich Text Format (.rtf) files e.g. when a user opens a specially crafted .rtf file with Word or previews a specially crafted e-mail.

3) An unspecified error when parsing certain records can be exploited to corrupt memory via a specially crafted Word file.

4) An error exists when processing consecutive "\do" drawing object tags encountered in RTF documents. This can be exploited to free a heap buffer twice and corrupt memory.

5) An error when processing mismatched "\dpgroup" and "\dpendgroup" controlwords can be exploited to cause a buffer overflow via an RTF document containing an overly large number of "\dpendgroup" tags.

6) A boundary error when parsing RTF documents containing multiple drawing object tags can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow.

7) A boundary error when processing RTF documents can be exploited to overflow a static buffer via a document containing an overly large number of "\stylesheet" control words.

8) An error when processing a malformed table property can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow via a specially crafted Word document.

Successful exploitation of the vulnerabilities may allow execution of arbitrary code.

Solution
Apply patches.
Further details available in Customer Area

Provided and/or discovered by
1) The vendor credits Ricardo Narvaja, Core Security Technologies.
2) Dyon Balding, Secunia Research.
3) The vendor credits Yamata Li, Palo Alto Networks.
4) The vendor credits Wushi via ZDI.
5) The vendor credits Aaron Portnoy, TippingPoint DVLabs.
6) The vendor credits Wushi of team509 via ZDI.
7) The vendor credits Aaron Portnoy, TippingPoint DVLabs.
8) The vendor credits Wushi and Ling via ZDI.

Changelog
Further details available in Customer Area

Original Advisory
MS08-072 (KB957173):
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-072.mspx

Secunia Research:
http://secunia.com/secunia_research/2008-21/

ZDI:
http://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-08-084/
http://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-08-085/
http://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-08-086/

TippingPoint DVLabs:
http://dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/advisory/TPTI-08-08
http://dvlabs.tippingpoint.com/advisory/TPTI-08-09

Core Security Technologies:
http://www.coresecurity.com/content/word-arbitrary-free

Alternate/detailed remediation
Further details available in Customer Area

Deep Links
Links available in Customer Area