Microsoft Issues Zero-Day Attack Alert For Word
0xbl00d writes "Eweek.com is reporting a new Microsoft Word zero-day attack underway. Microsoft issued a security advisory to acknowledge the unpatched flaw, which affects Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Word 2002, Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Word Viewer 2003, Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac and Microsoft Word 2004 v. X for Mac. The Microsoft Works 2004, 2005 and 2006 suites are also affected because they include Microsoft Word. Simply opening a word document will launch the exploit. There are no pre-patch workarounds or anti-virus signatures available. Microsoft suggests that users 'not open or save Word files,' even from trusted sources."
That the business world just stop for a few minutes(days, weeks) while they fix this.
If I can't even open my friends' documents then what am I - as a manager to do?
Oh, wait - I don't do anything anyway and my life revolves around Excel.
Nevermind.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
So let me get this straight... For the time being the only safe Word files are new files that other people don't need to open?
But hey, you saved a ton of money on retraining costs.
Maybe not
http://docs.google.com/
Could the problem be avoided by opening the any .doc files with OO.org? i'm assuming that the exploit will only work if the file is actually opened with word, so it would stand to reason that opening it with some other application would be safe. can anyone tell me why i'm wrong?
my pet machine
Good general advice, really. They should put that on the Office packaging, like on a packet of cigarettes.
ant
In the meantime, download and use OpenOffice
So, Microsoft are basically telling us to stop using Word? Sounds like great advice to me -- cheers, Bill!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
What the heck does zero-day mean?
Making the Ribbon, and then congratulating themselves on how cool it looks, and then making advertisements with people with dinosaur heads.
2cv
Microsoft DOES NOT suggest that
as stated in the summary.What they do say is :
That is nothing more than standard precautions that one should take anyway. If you aren't expecting an attachment, don't open it. If you are expecting it, and it is from a trusted source, go ahead.
Nothing to see here, move along...
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The actual quote from the Microsoft page is:
If you send an email to Fred saying "Can you send me xxxx", and Fred replies, saying "Here it is", you can probably safely open the attachment. You should just exercise caution when Fred sends you an email out of the blue saying "Hey, read this would you?".
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
And typical me not reading TF security advisory before posting. The actual wording from Microsoft is:
Do not open or save Word files that you receive from un-trusted sources or that you receive unexpectedly from trusted sources.
You forgot to mention the Vista sound. The put tons of effort into that.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
And thus begins the torrent of Microsoft mocking posts. Get your mod-points out and set them to +5 Funny because the laughs are only just beginning. *sigh*
This is a new spin to upgrade to their new Office 2007 product line.
Not opening Word files seems like a good idea. Microsoft IP's in them, and that's icky.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Yet ANOTHER feature Word has that OpenOffice doesn't. :(
I'm not to worried about this because most users are aware of attachment exploits like this.
I'm sure the major spam firewalls will also have signatures in a relatively short period of time. If my email spam/virus firewall will stop this I'm fine.
For the home user it is a bit more of an issue. At the same time most people use Yahoo, MSN, Google or some other account that has active scanner that I'm sure will be able to block these in the short run...if not by analyzing the file by analyzing the subject line. Heck, chances are it'll look like spam to my firewall won't let it thru to begin with.
I do wish MS would put out the technical details of this exploit. It sounds like some sort of a buffer overflow. Something tells me it is a graphic insert of some sort, but who knows.
Good thing I connect via WiFi.
I thought Zero-day refered to the first day that a vulnerability is publicly available. Start counting up from there. I've seen it used in every possible way though. Sometimes I gather people are refering to the day the patch was issued. Wikipedia doesn't really clear it up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_day
Tharkban (It is a signature after all)
Dear Professor,
My final project for the semester is attached as a Word document. If you have any problems reading it, please let me know. Me and everyone else in your address book.
Don't have to worry about grading it. By the time you read this, I will have used the root-kit to grade it myself.
Nice porn, by the way! You dog! We'll make this our little secret.
love,
toodles
Ah, license to ignore any unexpected memos for the next couple of days, excellent
Except that I have been saying that for years. MS Doc format is an untrustworthy format. It has been known to carry unexpected payloads in the past and there are alternatives which are known to be safer yielding similar if not identical results for most people. (And if someone thinks they actually NEED to have VBA in a word document, I'd have to suggest there's probably a better way to program your way out of the situation you find yourself in. I just haven't been able to think of a good reason to have programming code in a Word document and I haven't seen a good example either. Can anyone offer a reason good enough?
ODT works well... hell, for that matter RTF works well enough for most people.
At least there was a warning rather than 43 unannounced patches next Tuesday, I'll say that much for them. Its a shame that there is no patch yet though. Without saying how detrimental this will be for MS, I'm thinking that now I can't tell people that OOo is just like MS Office but free... now I have to tell them that its probably safer too. Ugggh, the people that want OOo and F/OSS software to be as good as MS Office and OS products really bug me, and this story is exactly why.
Ya, sure, MS is the biggest target, so gets more hacker attention. Just the same, being king of the hill is not easy, and F/OSS software makers should do their best to simply keep doing things well, rather than doing them 'just like MS does' as its not working out so good for Redmond today.
Do everything that 80+% of users want, do it very well, and let the Excel gurus and desktop publishing companies do the things for those other 12% or so. That's the biggest bang for buck right there. That 12% might be the biggest spenders, but they also don't care about the cost, or don't want to retrain or convert etc. ad nauseum.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
How is one supposed to exercise caution when opening a Word document? Do click on it slowly and deliberately, or do you click it carefully after giving the PC a pat on the head...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Office for MacOS X has 2 versions: v.X (10.x) and 2004 (11.x)
There is no 'Microsoft Word 2004 v. X for Mac'
I've noticed both Notepad and Wordpad are not vulnerable.
I'll just stick with these inferior applications while boasting a smug sense of superiority.
Ha-HA!
Did anyone else read that as "Microsoft Ossues Zero-Day Attack Alert For World"?
...that so many people have a bad habit of composing even a simple text message in Word, then emailing it out as an attachment. We have a number of people who do this at work, despite being repeatedly reminded that they can simply write their message within their email program. It's aggravating to receive an email that simply reads "see attached", then to actually read the 3-sentence message one has to save the .doc file to their computer, fire up word, and open the file, potentially exposing themselves to whatever the newest exploit is.
That's why the Windows XP Security Guide is distributed a .doc...
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
I'm sure the major spam firewalls will also have signatures in a relatively short period of time. If my email spam/virus firewall will stop this I'm fine.
And what do you do about the exploits already mailed to you, before the firewall suppliers figure out signatures and put them in place?
And if they don't successfully design signatures to catch ALL exploits of the flaw, what do you do about later stuff that exploits the flaw differently, and arrives in the window before signatures for THAT exploit are developed.
And so on.
Reactive anti-malware firewalls and filters will always have vulnerability windows between exploit and update and will usually have multiple windows per vulnerability - because updates are triggered by exploits and signatures tend to be tuned to exploits rather than flaws.
Flaw-fixing has a window of vulnerability too, but only one (if it's done correctly).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The quote in the summary was from TFA and was correct.
Your guidance is wrong. "Probably" means more likely than not. According to Microsoft's own statistics Fred's XP workstation is "probably" a rooted, keylogging spambot zombie. His files safe? Get real.
On the other hand, your machine is "probably" exploited already too, so why not just give up? Everyone else has. It's not like anybody wants to read your boring data anyway, right? Besides, what are we to do? If we can't use Office, we might as well give up and go home. We can just keep clicking away those popups until the machine slows down so much it won't function at all and then Ted from IT will fix it. You didn't really like google anyway -- that targeted search assistant is so much better at finding just the right thing. It's like it knows you.
Never mind.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Do not start Windows, even when using trusted computing"
I like Notepad better anyway.
What GP was mad about is not that user processes can have bugs, but that user processes could be in a position to threaten the stability of the operating system. He's wrong about the nature of the threat we're talking about here, but that's a separate point.
Would you like some help?
They actually did say that, but you could claim the slashdot post was misquoted: "Recommendation: Do not open or save Word files that you receive from un-trusted or that are received unexpected from trusted sources. This vulnerability could be exploited when a user opens a file."
I know this is slashdot, but RTFA.
This sig is intentionally left blank
you will be vindicated. I have stuck with Office 97, because I have never thought that any of the "improvements" that M$ has made in newer versions of Office were worth the price of a new program. It is now too old to be affected by the latest virus. Lord, this is sweet.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
No it isn't. How old are you? Have you ever worked in anything other than McDonalds? Company Confidentiality is essential for running a business. It's also a legal requirement in the case of HR records. Uploading particualar records to Google would breach numerous laws and could get you closed down.
Legal issues aside, it's well known that Google do analysis of their data. Do you really want a bot crawling over your companies secrets? What if your business is something that overlaps with one of Google's products?
Do Google provide an SLA? Do you even know what an SLA is? What if the site's down, do you just send everyone home for the day? What's their privacy policy? Data safeguards? Encryption? Backups? Version control?
The rest of your post is equally nonsensical. What does the warranty provided with Microsoft Word have to do with corporate mismanagement and it's possible effects on the western economy? Next you'll be telling me it was Microsoft that invaded Poland.
If you're on the Mac too, then TeXShop is a pretty decent GUI for LaTeX documents. It's universal, open-source (GPL), and ties in with MacTeX and Aqua.
Here is a message we sent to customers. Links were added for posting on Slashdot:
Everyone,
Don't use Microsoft Word. Use Open Office instead. This advice remains effective until Microsoft releases a patch, and it is installed.
Microsoft just issued a security advisory warning people not to open Microsoft Word documents unless they have the latest version of Microsoft Word, which was just released, and costs $329 for the upgrade, or $679 for the most powerful full version.
On the security advisory web page the relevant parts are buried in sections that aren't visible unless you click on them:
"Do not open or save Word files that you receive from un-trusted sources or that you receive unexpectedly from trusted sources. This vulnerability could be exploited when a user opens a specially crafted Word file."
"We recommend that customers exercise extreme caution when they accept file transfers [files] from both known and unknown sources."
The vulnerability is being actively used to infect user's computers. That's the meaning of the phrase "zero-day" attack in the first sentence of the advisory. None of the anti-virus software vendors have made signatures for this attack yet, which means that anti-virus software CANNOT protect against an attack.
The reason Microsoft says to "exercise extreme caution" with files received "from both known and unknown sources", is that no one, not even computer consultants, can know whether a source can be trusted, since the anti-virus vendors have not yet made a method of detection for this vulnerability.
Michael
It's always worked in the past. Why change a winning formula?
I initially thought about using OpenOffice; I think it's probably the best solution overall, since it's free and you can get it right now. But let's say you absolutely need to work in Word -- how can you make sure that a document is safe?
If you opened a document in OO, and then saved it, would the resulting document be guaranteed to be clean? What if you saved it as an RTF and then opened that back up in Word? That would probably lose a lot of people's fancy formatting, but it would preserve most of the content and markup. I suppose the most paranoid thing to do would be to save all documents out to ASCII and then open them up in Word, but at that point you've negated any reason to use Word in the first place.
If OO tries to open a file, and it has a maliciously-crafted (which to OO, I assume, would appear corrupt) binary object in it, will OO refuse to open the file / remove the corrupt object? Or will it just ignore it and continue on its way?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Maybe the method Word uses to render itself - when used on a certain font with the right combination of letters - infects your brain somehow. I guess it's working on the same principal as flash ads.
which is totally what she said
Microsoft is just taking the paperless office to the next level - the documentless office.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
From:
To: All_Employees
Subject: Corporate Security Alert
Significance: High
Microsoft has announced a security alert pertaining to MSWord - probably all versions. Microsoft recommends not opening any MSWord documents from anyone, until further notice. Please see attached for details.
Thank you,
IT Department
[attachment - MSSecurityAlertDetails.doc - 1,253KB]