That’s a nice attack surface, it’d be a shame if someone hacked it…
600 million daily attacks on Microsoft customers (2024) 1
Average cost of a data breach was $4.88 million (2024) 2
Attacks on Microsoft Office increased by 53% (2023) 3
Microsoft Office accounted for 70% of application exploits (2023) 4,5,6
43% of malware downloads are office documents (2021) 4
94% of malware is delivered by email (2024) 1
1) https://news.microsoft.com/en-cee/2024/11/29/microsoft-digital-defense-report-600-million-cyberattacks-per-day-around-the-globe/
2) https://www.packetlabs.net/posts/the-top-cybersecurity-statistics-for-2024/
3) https://www.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/rising-threats-cybercriminals-unleash-411000-malicious-files-daily-in-2023
4) https://www.deepinstinct.com/blog/malicious-office-files-20-years-of-microsoft-office-exploits
5) https://www.microsoft.com/content/dam/microsoft/final/en-us/microsoft-brand/documents/MDDR_FINAL_2023_1004.pdf
6) https://blog.qualys.com/vulnerabilities-threat-research/2023/09/04/qualys-top-20-exploited-vulnerabilities
Attack Vectors That Matter
Document Processing Attacks: Malicious files don’t just contain bad content they can exploit the parsing engines themselves. Embedded macros execute in trusted contexts. Malformed documents trigger buffer overflows in rendering code. External references in PDFs and documents can exfiltrate data or establish command channels. Font rendering vulnerabilities can achieve code execution through seemingly innocent typography – it happened to the Windows Adobe Type Manager library.
Real-Time Collaboration: Multi-user editing introduces operational attacks where malicious edits corrupt document state or bypass access controls. Session hijacking provides attackers with legitimate-seeming access. Sync poisoning attacks manipulate the conflict resolution algorithms to inject unauthorized content or steal data from other users’ sessions.
API Vulnerabilities: Protocol implementations can contain authentication bypass flaws. Tokens can get stolen and replayed across sessions. API rate limiting can be circumvented to enable data exfiltration. Cross-tenant isolation failures in multi-customer environments expose sensitive documents to unauthorized access.
Infrastructure Compromise: Document containers can be escaped through format conversion exploits. Memory corruption in file parsing leads to privilege escalation. Legitimate-looking API calls mask data theft. File system access through document references enables broader system compromise.
Collabora Online Has Your Back!
Collabora engineers lead the security processes at the LibreOffice project and command decades of open source office development experience. Every document format vulnerability that’s been discovered and patched in LibreOffice automatically benefits Collabora Online deployments. This isn’t theoretical security, it’s proven through all the production installations across government, finance, and healthcare environments where document-based attacks are actively attempted.Proven Security Architecture: The real-time collaboration engine has been stress-tested through enterprise deployments supporting thousands of concurrent users.
Enterprise-Grade Integration Security: Collabora’s WOPI-like implementation follows security best practices developed through hundreds of enterprise integrations.
Open Source Security Advantage: As an open-source solution Collabora Online benefits from transparent code review by a global development community. Security vulnerabilities can’t hide in proprietary black boxes, they’re scrutinised by security experts worldwide.
Verifiable Security: Why trust in a black box service that hides its security behind proprietary walls, Collabora Online submits its open source code to rigorous and continuous third-party security analysis at Coverity Scan, the same platform trusted by the Linux Kernel and NASA. Our publically available defect metrics demonstrate measurable security commitment and attainment of enterprise-grade security practices.
Peace of Mind Integrations: Building document collaboration security from scratch means spending years learning lessons that Collabora Online has already learned through real-world deployments. Vulnerabilities you’ll discover, they’ve already encountered and patched. Attack vectors you’ll need to defend against, they’re already monitoring.
Integration isn’t just faster—it’s more secure. You inherit proven defences instead of discovering vulnerabilities through production breaches. You get a security team that’s already expert in document-based attacks instead of building that expertise through painful experience.
Don’t delay, talk to our expert engineering sales team and discover how Collabora Online can secure your online documents.
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