| Summary: | This security update resolves three privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office PowerPoint and Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted PowerPoint file. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.
This security update is rated Critical for supported editions of Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2000 and rated Important for supported editions of Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2002, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer 2003, Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats, Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac, and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. For more information, see the subsection, Affected and Non-Affected Software, in this section.
The security update addresses the vulnerabilities by modifying the way that Microsoft Office PowerPoint allocates memory when opening PowerPoint files. For more information about the vulnerability, see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) subsection for the specific vulnerability entry under the next section, Vulnerability Information. |
