COMMAND
Excel
SYSTEMS AFFECTED
Microsoft Excel 97 (prior?)
PROBLEM
Clive Flint found following. Everytime one tries to print a sheet
the computer will crash showing the BSOD
(KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED). Investigation showed that there
was a cell with over 3700 spaces in it. When this was removed
the spreadsheet started working again properly. Seeing that today
everything seems to be integrated, malicous user may use this to
crash your system via httpd request. This was tested with:
NT4 with SP4
Excel 97
HP4000TN printer via the jetdirect card on a Novell 3.12 Network
Printing to LPT2 redirected to the network via a NET USE command
Other printers were tested with varying results.
SOLUTION
Dunno. It is still unclear if this is Excel problem or not as
tests with other printers were varying (sounds like printer driver
problem). Anyway, remote exploit is obviously possible and there
is no simple answer how to correct that at user level.