OpenOffice has issued a high-priority update to fix at least six vulnerabilities affecting users of its free desktop productivity suite.

The open-source group said the critical vulnerabilities affect OpenOffice.org suite versions prior to 2.4.

An alert from Symantec's DeepSight TMS (Threat Management System) warns:

Attackers may exploit these vulnerabilities by enticing victims into opening maliciously crafted files. This may be done by hosting files on a webpage or distributing them via email, file sharing, and instant messaging. A successful exploit will allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the affected application.

The technical details:

CVE-2007-4770/4771: A security vulnerability with the way OpenOffice.org 2 processes ODF text documents with XForms, using the third-party library ICU, may allow a remote unprivileged user who provides an OpenOffice.org document that is opened by a local user to execute arbitrary commands on the system with the privileges of the user running OpenOffice.org. No working exploit is known right now.

CVE-2007-5745/5747: A security vulnerability with the way OpenOffice.org 2 processes Quattro Pro files may allow a remote unprivileged user who provides an OpenOffice.org document that is opened by a local user to execute arbitrary commands on the system with the privileges of the user running OpenOffice.org. No working exploit is known right now.

CVE-2007-5746: A security vulnerability with the way OpenOffice.org 1.1 and 2 process EMF files may allow a remote unprivileged user who provides an OpenOffice.org document that is opened by a local user to execute arbitrary commands on the system with the privileges of the user running OpenOffice.org. No working exploit is known right now.

CVE-2008-0320: A security vulnerability with the way OpenOffice.org 1.1 and 2 process OLE files may allow a remote unprivileged user who provides an OpenOffice.org document that is opened by a local user to execute arbitrary commands on the system with the privileges of the user running OpenOffice.org. No working exploit is known right now.

The patches were originally released on March 27, but the security-related information was withheld "to ensure that all the products derived from the OpenOffice.org codebase had time to include these security fixes before the public announcement of the vulnerabilities," OpenOffice said.