Microsoft Word Security Issue

Microsoft announces that there are some security problems with many different versions of Word. Microsoft claims that users might get the virus from accidentally opening a Word document sent by an unknown sender. They also claim that they will try to fix it by December 12th.

The source article: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/...ory/929433.mspx

Personally, I think most problems would be solved if people simply didn't open email attachments from unknown senders. I mean usually there is no reason to be opening an attachment unless it came from a friend of yours whom you trusted. If it was just a random person requesting whatever and you weren't sure if this person was truthful or lying, you could always reply and ask that they paste it into the normal email body.

But of course there's also the chance in which your friend has a virus unknowingly embedded in their Microsoft Word. In that case, this advisory applies...and so...watch out!

Yup, we are all at the mercy of the software companies. There is only so much measures that we can take to protect ourselves. Anyway, thanx arbitrary for putting this on the forum. I didn't know about it until I read it in the forum.

Interesting that they are going after word, been what since 97 that people tried to attack a computer that way?

Of course how many people use word to read email's? I know you can connect through outlook express through word to send it. But other then that most people send text files most of the time. I don't know to many non-businesses that send word documents.

Still is interesting though, although they didn't mention word 2007 though . But we should expect a update to pop up in a short time or not, because by then everyone will have vista (yeah right).

I love Microsoft's temporary workaround in the quoted link. Tomorrow I'll tell my boss that I did not open his word document because it's coming from an untrusted person.

Not too keen on your job, are you?



Simplest workaround on this issue... Don't send freaking MS office format files over email. If the recipient is meant to modify the document go with RTF format, if not PDF is the way to go. Of course Microsoft won't recommend this as its basically admitting the obvious faults in their product.

Personally I never send DOC files even to my friends unless they specifically ask for it. And most of them seems to prefer PDF anyways.

I also prefer PDF to send documents to my colleges, anyway DOCs are quite handy...

They should fix this problem as fast as possible.

Tell Microsoft to include a PDF maker with Office OpenOffice.org is awesome because it actually includes that feature. The only thing wrong with OpenOffice is the GUI.

[N]F

I heard something that they wanted to make PDF stuff on the "new" Vista or somewhere I forgot, but they got a lot of stuff (can't really remember) from Adobe, due to they are selling their products to do that, even though OO has export to pdf, I don't remember what was the issue, as a matter of fact it could be that I read about this in this forum or I might seen it on TV.