Microsoft Office Excel 2002 SP3, 2003 SP3, and 2007 SP1 and SP2; Office 2004 and 2008 for Mac; Open XML File Format Converter for Mac; Office Excel Viewer SP1 and SP2; and Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats SP1 and SP2 do not properly parse the Excel file format, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a crafted spreadsheet that causes memory to be interpreted as a different object type than intended, aka Microsoft Office Excel Sheet Object Type Confusion Vulnerability.
The product allocates or initializes a resource such as a pointer, object, or variable using one type, but it later accesses that resource using a type that is incompatible with the original type.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Excel | Microsoft | 2002-sp3 (including) | 2002-sp3 (including) |
| Excel | Microsoft | 2003-sp3 (including) | 2003-sp3 (including) |
| Excel | Microsoft | 2007-sp1 (including) | 2007-sp1 (including) |
| Excel | Microsoft | 2007-sp2 (including) | 2007-sp2 (including) |
| Office | Microsoft | 2004 (including) | 2004 (including) |
| Office | Microsoft | 2008 (including) | 2008 (including) |
| Office_compatibility_pack | Microsoft | 2007-sp1 (including) | 2007-sp1 (including) |
| Office_compatibility_pack | Microsoft | 2007-sp2 (including) | 2007-sp2 (including) |
| Office_excel_viewer | Microsoft | –sp1 (including) | –sp1 (including) |
| Office_excel_viewer | Microsoft | –sp2 (including) | –sp2 (including) |
| Office_sharepoint_server | Microsoft | 2007-sp1 (including) | 2007-sp1 (including) |
| Office_sharepoint_server | Microsoft | 2007-sp2 (including) | 2007-sp2 (including) |
| Open_xml_file_format_converter | Microsoft | * | * |
When the product accesses the resource using an incompatible type, this could trigger logical errors because the resource does not have expected properties. In languages without memory safety, such as C and C++, type confusion can lead to out-of-bounds memory access. While this weakness is frequently associated with unions when parsing data with many different embedded object types in C, it can be present in any application that can interpret the same variable or memory location in multiple ways. This weakness is not unique to C and C++. For example, errors in PHP applications can be triggered by providing array parameters when scalars are expected, or vice versa. Languages such as Perl, which perform automatic conversion of a variable of one type when it is accessed as if it were another type, can also contain these issues.