October 12, 2021

LibreOffice and OpenOffice have recently fixed a vulnerability that allows attackers to manipulate documents to appear to be signed by a trusted source.

The error, named CVE-2021-41832, was discovered by four researchers at the Ruhr University Bochum and is classified as moderate, but has serious consequences.

For those who use one of the two open-source office suites, it is recommended to manually update to the latest available versions of OpenOffice, which are 4.1.10 and later, and 7.0.5 or 7.1.1 and later for LibreOffice, by downloading them from their respective download centers since the two applications do not provide automatic upgrades.

Linux users who do not have the specified version update are recommended to download the “deb”, or “rpm” package from the download centre or build LibreOffice from source.

In situations where upgrading to the latest version is not possible, users are advised to completely disable the macro functionality of their Office suite and set macro security to LibreOffice. It is recommended to go to Tools-Options-LibreOffice-Security and finally click on ‘Macro Security’ from where you can choose between four different security levels.

For more information, read the original story in Bleeping Computer.