Software Engineering Institute

Iceni Argus is a PDF conversion library. Argus 6.20 and earlier fail to properly handle malformed flate-compressed content in PDF documents, resulting in a stack buffer overflow. Other Argus applications that share the same codebase with Argus may also be affected. We have confirmed that Iceni Infix 5.04 is affected by this vulnerability.

By causing the Iceni PDF library to parse a specially-crafted PDF document, a remote, unauthenticated attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the application using the library.

We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem. Please consider the following workarounds.

Use the Microsoft Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit

The Microsoft Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) can be used to help prevent exploitation of these vulnerabilities.

Enable DEP in Microsoft Windows

Consider enabling Data Execution Prevention (DEP) in supported versions of Windows. DEP should not be treated as a complete workaround, but it can mitigate the execution of attacker-supplied code in some cases. Microsoft has published detailed technical information about DEP in Security Research & Defense blog posts "Understanding DEP as a mitigation technology" part 1 and part 2. DEP should be used in conjunction with the application of patches or other mitigations described in this document.

Note that when relying on DEP for exploit mitigation, it is important to use a system that supports Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) as well. ASLR is not supported by Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 or earlier. ASLR was introduced with Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Please see the Microsoft SRD blog entry: On the effectiveness of DEP and ASLR for more details.