The company Office 0patch had informed me by mail about the following: In Office 2003, the equation editor is not vulnerable. The speculation was that Microsoft no longer has access to the source code.Īnd there is another strange thing. In my German blog post Hat Microsoft Zugriff auf Teile des Office-Quellcodes verloren? I had also pointed out that Microsoft has patched the formula editor binary, which is a bit obscure. Microsoft had to take action because hackers already exploited this vulnerability (see Hacker are misusing CVE-2017-11882 in Office EQNEDT32.EXE). While Microsoft replaced the old EQNEDT32.EXE component with a new component in 2007, the older file is still included in all Office installations so that users can load and edit equations that were created with the old component.
The equation editor EQNEDT32.EXE, which was included in Microsoft Office until 2007 but was still shipped with Office, received an update to close the gap on November 2017 patchday (I mentioned it in the blog post Microsoft Office security updates (November 14, 2017)).
It turned out that this vulnerability was present in all Microsoft Office and Windows versions for the last 17 years. An article about the bugs can also be found here. In the summer of 2017, researchers from the cyber security company Embedi discovered a CVE-2017-11882 vulnerability in the Office formula editor.
A useful equation typing tool for you to tryĪll in all, Free Equation Editor proves to be a handy, albeit slightly limited application that can assist users in their equation writing tasks, enabling them to work with numerous symbols and signs, with only a couple of mouse clicks.Equation Edition s a sad chapter in Microsoft Office. The typed equations cannot be copied to clipboard, they can only be saved to image format, JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF and others. While the utility features a ‘Zoom in / Zoom out’ function, the font, size and color cannot be adjusted to suit certain requirements or for emphasis purposes. It includes ‘Math Symbols’, ‘Typeface’ signs, ‘Measure’ units, ‘Shape Symbols’, ‘Greek Capital’ letters and symbols, ‘Arrows’, ‘Brackets’, ‘Logarithm Symbols’, ‘Functions’, ‘Integrals’, ‘Matrices’ and ‘Fractions’.Įach menu comprises different characters and signs which can be inserted by clicking them some of them can be customized by entering additional letters and numbers, as keyboard buttons remain usable, so users can also write text (explanations, notes, etc). The program comprises multiple special characters in order to help users type even the most complex of equations in just a few mouse clicks. Swiftly write and edit mathematical and scientific equations The main window of Free Equation Editor features a ribbon where all the categories of symbols can be found in dedicated menus, letting users work with the ones they need, while from the ‘File’ menu, the final product can be exported. The application experiences a brief installation process, with no particularly noteworthy events, following which users can launch it and begin working with it immediately, thanks to its fairly intuitive looks. Friendly appearance for both novices and the more experienced
Free Equation Editor is an efficient and practical software solution created for individuals who often find themselves in the need to write down mathematical or scientific equations, as it can help them work with a wide range of special characters and save the results to images.