Executive Summary

CVE-2018-25242 is a denial of service vulnerability in Microsoft One Search version 1.1.0.0 that allows local attackers to crash the application.

The vulnerability occurs when an attacker submits an excessively long input string—950 or more characters—into the search bar, which triggers an unhandled exception and causes the application to crash.

This issue arises from incorrect parsing of numbers with different radices (CWE-1389), leading to a buffer overflow condition.

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Impact Analysis

This vulnerability can impact you by causing the Microsoft One Search application to crash unexpectedly when a specially crafted input is submitted.

Since the attack requires local access and no special privileges, an attacker with access to the system can disrupt availability of the application.

The impact is limited to availability, meaning the confidentiality and integrity of data are not affected, but the application becomes unusable until restarted.

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Detection Guidance

This vulnerability can be detected by attempting to reproduce the crash condition locally on the affected Microsoft One Search application version 1.1.0.0 or earlier.

A practical detection method involves creating a payload of 950 or more characters (for example, 950 "A" characters), copying it to the clipboard, and pasting it into the search bar of the One Search application. If the application crashes, the vulnerability is present.

There are no specific network commands to detect this vulnerability since it requires local access and interaction with the application.

Example command to create the payload file using Python:

• python -c "print('A'*950)" > PoC.txt

Then open PoC.txt, copy its contents to the clipboard, and paste into the One Search application's search bar to test for the crash.

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Mitigation Strategies

Immediate mitigation steps include restricting local access to the Microsoft One Search application to trusted users only, as the vulnerability requires local access to exploit.

Avoid pasting or entering excessively long input strings (950 or more characters) into the search bar of the application.

Monitor for application crashes and consider disabling or uninstalling the vulnerable version of Microsoft One Search until a patch or update is available.

Since the vulnerability is local and requires no privileges, limiting user permissions and educating users about this issue can help reduce risk.

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Compliance Impact

This vulnerability is a denial of service issue that affects the availability of the Microsoft One Search application by allowing local attackers to crash it through excessively long input strings.

Since the vulnerability does not impact confidentiality or integrity of data, but only availability, its direct effect on compliance with standards like GDPR or HIPAA—which primarily focus on protecting personal data confidentiality and integrity—is limited.

However, availability is also a component of many security frameworks, so repeated exploitation could potentially affect compliance related to service availability requirements.

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