Gnumeric: Heap overflow in the included PCRE library — GLSA 200509-02

Gnumeric is vulnerable to a heap overflow, possibly leading to the execution of arbitrary code.

Affected packages

app-office/gnumeric on all architectures
Affected versions < 1.4.3-r2
Unaffected versions >= 1.4.3-r2

Background

The Gnumeric spreadsheet is a versatile application developed as part of the GNOME Office project. libpcre is a library providing functions for Perl-compatible regular expressions.

Description

Gnumeric contains a private copy of libpcre which is subject to an integer overflow leading to a heap overflow (see GLSA 200508-17).

Impact

An attacker could potentially exploit this vulnerability by tricking a user into opening a specially crafted spreadsheet, which could lead to the execution of arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running Gnumeric.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Gnumeric users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-office/gnumeric-1.4.3-r2"

References

Release date
September 03, 2005

Latest revision
September 03, 2005: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
remote

Bugzilla entries