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Word 2007 Flaws Are Features, Not Bugs

Posted by Zonk on from the i-thought-that-was-just-a-programmer-joke dept.

PetManimal writes "Mati Aharoni's discovery of three flaws in Word using a fuzzer (screenshots) has been discounted by Microsoft, which claims that the crashes and malformed Word documents are a feature of Word, not a bug. Microsoft's Security Response Center is also refusing to classify the flaws as security problems. According to Microsoft developer David LeBlanc, crashes aren't necessarily DoS situations: 'You may rightfully say that crashing is always bad, and having a server-class app background, I agree. Crashing means you made a mistake, bad programmer, no biscuit. However, crashing may be the lesser of the evils in many places. In the event that our apps crash, we have recovery mechanisms, ways to report the crash so we know what function had the problem, and so on. I really take issue with those who would characterize a client-side crash as a denial of service.' Computerworld's Frank Hayes responds to LeBlanc and questions Microsoft's logic.'"

5 of 411 comments (clear)

  1. Repeat after me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    War is peace.
    Freedom is slavery.
    Ignorance is strength.

  2. What by wumpus188 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Crashing means you made a mistake, bad programmer, no biscuit.

    So if your application crashes, this is my mistake as the user? ... Great attitude pal, keep it up.

  3. My Favorite... by mkw87 · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    My favorite "feature" occurs when I'm trying to work on a pre-2007 word file from my USB Thumb drive. Occasionally a perfectly fine file will delete itself when I try to save it. I open it from the thumb drive, make a few changes, CTRL+S to save, and it says it has a write error, even though the file is not read only, etc. It then proceeds to crash, and DELETE THE FILE.

    Now, take the same file (or entire working folder), copy it to a local drive, and it edits and saves just fine. I haven't figured it out yet, probably never will. Luckily every time this has happened to me it's been a group project file and I regularly give my group members backup copies for their own edits, etc.

    --
    Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud. Soon, you realize the pig is dirty, and he likes it.
  4. Re:I don't see the problem by cgrayson · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I tried that, but it didn't work. But then again, maybe that's because I've made Windows open text files in a real editor, instead of that braindead piece of crap that hasn't had a new feature added to it since Windows For Workgroups...

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  5. So this is how I get my blog to become popular.... by unborracho · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s24secmaniac&r =36

    Get linked to on slashdot!

    (That is a graph of that blog's traffic)

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    "You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla