CVE-2011-2886 in Lotus Symphony
Summary
by MITRE
IBM Lotus Symphony 3 before FP3 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) via a .docx document with empty bullet styles for parent bullets.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/15/2021
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2011-2886 affects IBM Lotus Symphony 3 before fix pack 3, representing a denial of service flaw that can be exploited remotely through maliciously crafted Microsoft Word documents. This issue specifically targets the handling of .docx files containing empty bullet styles for parent bullets, demonstrating a critical weakness in the document parsing and rendering mechanisms of the software. The vulnerability falls under the category of improper input validation and insufficient error handling within the application's document processing pipeline, where the software fails to properly sanitize or handle malformed document structures that contain empty bullet style definitions.
The technical exploitation of this vulnerability occurs when IBM Lotus Symphony attempts to parse and render a .docx document that contains parent bullet elements with empty or undefined bullet styles. During the document parsing process, the application encounters these malformed bullet structures and fails to properly handle the empty style definitions, resulting in an application crash or unexpected termination. This behavior represents a classic buffer overflow or memory corruption scenario where the parsing engine attempts to access or manipulate memory locations that are either invalid or improperly initialized due to the empty bullet style definitions. The flaw demonstrates poor exception handling and lacks proper bounds checking mechanisms when processing document elements that do not conform to expected structural patterns.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple application instability, as it provides remote attackers with a reliable method to disrupt service availability for users of IBM Lotus Symphony. Attackers can craft malicious .docx documents containing the specific empty bullet style structures and distribute them through various means such as email attachments, file sharing platforms, or web downloads. When unsuspecting users open these documents within the vulnerable version of Lotus Symphony, the application crashes, forcing users to restart the application and potentially lose unsaved work. This denial of service capability can be particularly damaging in enterprise environments where document collaboration is frequent, as it can disrupt productivity and create security concerns around document handling practices.
Organizations utilizing IBM Lotus Symphony 3 before FP3 should implement immediate mitigations to protect against this vulnerability. The most effective approach involves applying the vendor-provided fix pack 3 that addresses the specific parsing issue with empty bullet styles. Additionally, administrators should consider implementing document validation policies that scan incoming .docx files for suspicious structures before allowing them to be processed by the application. Network security controls such as email filtering and web content filtering can help prevent the delivery of malicious documents to end users. From a security perspective, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-121, which describes heap-based buffer overflow conditions, and represents a typical example of how improper input validation can lead to denial of service conditions. The ATT&CK framework categorizes this as a privilege escalation technique through application-specific vulnerabilities, where attackers leverage software flaws to disrupt normal operations and potentially gain further access to systems. Organizations should also consider implementing application whitelisting policies to restrict execution of untrusted document files and maintain regular vulnerability assessments to identify similar issues in other productivity applications.