Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 DLL side loading vulnerability

Abstract

A DLL side loading vulnerability was found in Microsoft Office OneNote 2007. This issue can be exploited by loading the Microsoft Office OneNote Mobile ActiveSync Provider for Desktop object as an embedded OLE object. When instantiating the object Windows will try to load the DLL ceutil.dll from the current working directory. If an attacker convinces the user to open a specially crafted (Office) document from a directory also containing the attacker's DLL file, it is possible to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the target user. This can potentially result in the attacker taking complete control of the affected system.

Tested versions

This issue was successfully verified on Windows 7 + Office 2007 32-bit.

Fix

Microsoft released updates for Microsoft OneNote 2007 Service Pack 3 and Microsoft OneNote 2010 Service Pack 2 that fix this vulnerability:

Introduction

OLE is a technology that enables an application to create compound documents that contain information from a number of different sources. For example, a document in an OLE-enabled word processor can accept an embedded spreadsheet object. Unlike traditional "cut and paste" methods where the receiving application changes the format of the pasted information, embedded documents retain all their original properties. If the user decides to edit the embedded data, Windows activates the originating application and loads the embedded document.

OLE objects are loaded via a CLSID or indirectly via a programmatic identifier (ProgID). The CLSID is used to look up its associated DLL in the Windows Registry. In order to check if the provided CLSID is in fact an OLE object, this DLL needs to be loaded in memory first, even if the CLSID is not really an OLE object. Since the DLL may not be designed to be loaded this way, loading it can introduce security issues like side loading of malicious DLLs.

Vulnerability details

It was discovered that Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 is affected by DLL side loading. Loading the Microsoft Office OneNote Mobile ActiveSync Provider for Desktop object (CLSID {F97DE610-BBC2-4F3A-A86D-F261AA2CFC1B}) as an OLE object will result in Windows trying to load the DLL ceutil.dll from the current working directory.

Figure 1: ceutil.dll loaded from a relative path

An attacker can exploit this issue by convincing a target user into opening a specially crafted (Office) document from a directory containing the attacker's DLL. This allows for the execution of arbitrary code that will be executed with the privileges of the target user, potentially resulting in a full compromise of the affected system.