Slashdot Mirror
How Do You Handle New MS Word Vulnerabilities?
chipperdog asks: "With yet another zero-day exploit of MS-Word document files, what are fellow system admins doing to protect themselves against these threats? I have been blocking all .doc and .dot at the mail and proxy servers until malware scanners have signatures to detect and block the malicious files. Of course, this caused a uproar with the users, as there were continuous calls like: 'When can I send and receive Word files again' and 'I can't get anything done if I can't send/receive Word files'. Any suggestion of sending documents in different formats (like rtf, html, txt, or pdf) results in even more creative user 'feedback'. Has anyone done anything creative in their handling of word files — like having qmail-scanner pipe all .doc attachments through something such as wv to convert them to a less exploitable format?"
Blocking all doc files? Too funny. What a jerky self-important moron of an admin. Learn how to weigh risk and reward, dude. You clearly have no clue. Sounds like you have a hard-on for Microsoft and are trying to make a point.
Good luck with that and your next job, which is right around the corner. Maybe you can refuse to flip any burgers that have trans fat in them.
I'm just shaking my head and rolling my eyes. BOFH indeed.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Bottom line: Managing Word exploits is bad for business and probably for the economy. Cleaning malware off of small business computers is hard, backbreaking work. But for many home-based IT businesses, it puts food on the table. So, go ahead. Manage your Word exploits -- if you want to put thousands of business owners in the poorhouse and, ultimately, risk crashing our economy.