Bugtraq mailing list archives
Sun StarOffice documents that "phone home" and other interesting problems
From: Kurt Seifried <listuser () seifried org>
Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2000 22:32:40 -0600
I'm surprised no-one has yet posted this to Bugtraq, so here goes. StarOffice 5.2, downloaded from Sun. Simply insert a graphic, for filename give the URL. I simply used a gif from one of my websites, and watched the logfile while loading the document/etc. HTML document: it phones home, no warning, not unexpected. StarWriter document (version 5), it phones home, no warning. StarSpreadsheet (name?), it phones home, no warning. StarImpress (presentation ala powerpoint software), it phones home, no warning. Opening these documents in Linux, same results. The weirdest thing is when I ran strings on them I saw bits of data from other What concerns me even more is this: under Windows I created a new spreadsheet, inserted an image (http://blahblah), saved it and exited, then ran it through strings, and saw some data from an email I sent a while ago. WTF??? Closed outlook, tried it with starwriter, nothing, tried it again with starcalc, wasn't able to recreate it... Needless to say StarOffice raises some rather interesting issues, and seems to have some problems/glitches, if anyone can confirm this I would love to know. As for a warning dialog before downloading internet components that might be nice, something like: "do you wish to retrieve http://www.example.org/trackingimage-091919.gif?" But I doubt Sun will add that in. Kurt Seifried SecurityPortal, your focal point for security on the net http://www.securityportal.com/
Current thread:
- Re: Microsoft Word documents that "phone" home, (continued)
- Re: Microsoft Word documents that "phone" home Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor (Sep 01)
- Re: Microsoft Word documents that "phone" home Rex Sanders (Sep 01)
- Re: Microsoft Word documents that "phone" home Kris Kennaway (Sep 01)
- Re: Microsoft Word documents that "phone" home Michael Wojcik (Sep 01)
- Re: Microsoft Word documents that "phone" home Microsoft Security Response Center (Sep 01)
- Re: Microsoft Word documents that "phone" home Terje Bless (Sep 02)
- Re: Microsoft Word documents that "phone" home Brad (Sep 02)
- Other file formats that can "phone" home Richard M. Smith (Sep 03)
- Re: Other file formats that can "phone" home jsl2 (Sep 04)
- Re: Other file formats that can "phone" home Richard M. Smith (Sep 04)
- Sun StarOffice documents that "phone home" and other interesting problems Kurt Seifried (Sep 04)
- Re: Sun StarOffice documents that "phone home" and other interesting problems Luca Berra (Sep 05)
- Leftover data in other files (was Re: Sun StarOffice documents that "phone home".....) jsl2 (Sep 05)
- Re: Leftover data in other files (was Re: Sun StarOffice documents that "phone home".....) Ryan Russell (Sep 05)