Vulnerabilities > CVE-2018-8163 - Information Exposure vulnerability in Microsoft Excel and Office
Attack vector
NETWORK Attack complexity
MEDIUM Privileges required
NONE Confidentiality impact
PARTIAL Integrity impact
NONE Availability impact
NONE Summary
An information disclosure vulnerability exists when Microsoft Excel improperly discloses the contents of its memory, aka "Microsoft Excel Information Disclosure Vulnerability." This affects Microsoft Office, Microsoft Excel.
Vulnerable Configurations
| Part | Description | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Application | 4 |
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Subverting Environment Variable Values The attacker directly or indirectly modifies environment variables used by or controlling the target software. The attacker's goal is to cause the target software to deviate from its expected operation in a manner that benefits the attacker.
- Footprinting An attacker engages in probing and exploration activity to identify constituents and properties of the target. Footprinting is a general term to describe a variety of information gathering techniques, often used by attackers in preparation for some attack. It consists of using tools to learn as much as possible about the composition, configuration, and security mechanisms of the targeted application, system or network. Information that might be collected during a footprinting effort could include open ports, applications and their versions, network topology, and similar information. While footprinting is not intended to be damaging (although certain activities, such as network scans, can sometimes cause disruptions to vulnerable applications inadvertently) it may often pave the way for more damaging attacks.
- Exploiting Trust in Client (aka Make the Client Invisible) An attack of this type exploits a programs' vulnerabilities in client/server communication channel authentication and data integrity. It leverages the implicit trust a server places in the client, or more importantly, that which the server believes is the client. An attacker executes this type of attack by placing themselves in the communication channel between client and server such that communication directly to the server is possible where the server believes it is communicating only with a valid client. There are numerous variations of this type of attack.
- Browser Fingerprinting An attacker carefully crafts small snippets of Java Script to efficiently detect the type of browser the potential victim is using. Many web-based attacks need prior knowledge of the web browser including the version of browser to ensure successful exploitation of a vulnerability. Having this knowledge allows an attacker to target the victim with attacks that specifically exploit known or zero day weaknesses in the type and version of the browser used by the victim. Automating this process via Java Script as a part of the same delivery system used to exploit the browser is considered more efficient as the attacker can supply a browser fingerprinting method and integrate it with exploit code, all contained in Java Script and in response to the same web page request by the browser.
- Session Credential Falsification through Prediction This attack targets predictable session ID in order to gain privileges. The attacker can predict the session ID used during a transaction to perform spoofing and session hijacking.
Nessus
| NASL family | Windows : Microsoft Bulletins |
| NASL id | SMB_NT_MS18_MAY_EXCEL.NASL |
| description | The Microsoft Excel Products are missing security updates. It is, therefore, affected by multiple vulnerabilities : - A remote code execution vulnerability exists in Microsoft Excel software when the software fails to properly handle objects in memory. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could run arbitrary code in the context of the current user. If the current user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker could take control of the affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. (CVE-2018-8147, CVE-2018-8148, CVE-2018-8162) - An information disclosure vulnerability exists when Microsoft Excel improperly discloses the contents of its memory. (CVE-2018-8163) |
| last seen | 2020-06-01 |
| modified | 2020-06-02 |
| plugin id | 109612 |
| published | 2018-05-08 |
| reporter | This script is Copyright (C) 2018-2019 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof. |
| source | https://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/109612 |
| title | Security Updates for Microsoft Excel Products (May 2018) |
| code | |