Office zero-day bugs spoil Patch Tuesday

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Why bother with "office productivity" software?

If users were told that they should not open files from other sources in Microsoft Office, the package would be dead in a month.

Unlike some game or utility or screensaver, "office productivity" software is supposed to be used to distribute files and to open files from other users.

It is completely unworkable to require that users *know* the state of the system security at the point where the document originated. Most companies won't tell you if you did ask!

Likewise, it is unreasonable to expect that users of office software packages will be up-to-date on the latest state of software security.

If Microsoft (and the rest of the industry) don't get this stuff figured out, we will see a regression to the days when only certain software could open certain files.

Only this would make sense for a company tired of paying for an IT staff larger than any other non-profit-generating center and *still* not being able to count on their system going down because of some imported file from some (current or potential) vendor or customer. If you know all of the users in your company will be unable to open up any file that happen to fly their way, then you don't have to worry about this sort of trick-into-opening vulnerability.

Telling a company to prohibit file downloads from cd, email or floppy is not an option. It is also unlikely that any non-technology company (and, I suspect, most technology companies) will pay to keep all of their employees up to date (weekly or more often) on the latest threats--we are talking about training at the level of folks who regularly use spreadsheet, word processing, or presentation documents.

So please don't expect that any sort of warning screen that appears before each new document is opened will accomplish anything. Just what do you expect the department secretary to do? Tell the boss this file isn't usable? I don't believe so. . .

Posted by: rgathercoal@...   Posted on: 04/11/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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