14 DAY TRIAL // OpenOffice has always been regarded as the perfect solution for Microsoft Office, a more expensive solution powered by the Redmond-based company. Since it has been available for free for all Windows, Mac, and Linux users, OpenOffice is installed on millions of computers from all over the world. But, this impressive popularity doesn't necessarily mean that the Office suite is also 100 percent secure. This is why security company Secunia reported, today, a highly critical glitch in all OpenOffice versions prior to 2.3.1. That's why the only solution to avoid a successful exploitation is the update to the latest version of the application.
"A vulnerability has been reported in OpenOffice, which potentially can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system," Secunia wrote in the advisory. "The vulnerability is caused due to an unspecified error in the HSQLDB database engine and can be exploited to execute arbitrary static Java code via a specially crafted database document."
OpenOffice.org has already confirmed the problem and published a security advisory in order to give more information about it. "A security vulnerability in HSQLDB, the default database engine shipped with OpenOffice.org 2 (all versions), may allow attackers to execute arbitrary static Java code, by manipulating database documents to be opened by a user," it reads.
OpenOffice has always been a popular application among the users, who are not willing to pay such a big amount of money for an Office suite. For example, OpenOffice recorded no less than 120,490 downloads on Softpedia only for the Windows version. The Office suite is available for most platforms available out there, including Windows, Linux, Solaris and even for Mac OS X. The Mac release is the latest flavor that joined the OpenOffice family, being released a few months ago in beta stage.
If you want to download the latest version of OpenOffice for Windows, it is available right here on Softpedia.