New OpenOffice Bug Discovered

Posted by Jason on

September 27, 2007

A newly discovered vulnerability in the OpenOffice.org suite that could allow hackers to install malicious code on computers, and here’s the really worrying bit, it’s not just Windows, this also affects Mac and Linux users. This concerns version 2.0.4 and earlier (the most recent release,V2.3, is not affected) and it involves modified TIFF image files.

So far this loophole hasn’t been exploited ‘in the wild’ and it has only been tested on the Linux release, but it follows hard on the heels of a real world infection called ‘Badbunny’ that has been found on Mac, Windows and Linux PCs running OpenOffice. OpenOffice comes from the good guys of the software world, it is a free Open Source application and includes an excellent Word-compatible word processor called Writer; it was thought to have escaped the unwelcome attentions of the virus writers who tend to concentrate their fire on Microsoft products but now it seems nothing is sacred.