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Black Hat Talk Demonstrates New Document Exploits

Posted by timothy on from the send-you-this-file-in-order-to-have-your-advice dept.

darthcamaro writes "Remember the days of the viruses embedded in email attachments? They're coming back, according to a pair of researcher talking at Black Hat this week: '"If you have installed all Microsoft Office patches and there are no 0 day vulnerabilities, will it be safe to open a Word or Excel document?" TT asked the audience. "The answer is no."'"

5 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Is this really news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Anybody worth their salt knows that any attachment can be dangerous. You can hide all sorts of things in them. Especially for files that allow arbitrary things to be embedded in them, like Word documents.

  2. Well duh... by Oxford_Comma_Lover · · Score: 3, Funny

    Of course it's not safe to open the document. It could be a "Starbuck should be a dude" rant.

    --
    -- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
    1. Re:Well duh... by girlintraining · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Starbuck should be a dude"

      Sir, we're going to have to ask you to leave. Turn in your man card at the front office. You can pick it up on monday at the Men's Rules Enforcement Department off 7th street. You'll need to explain to them why you, as a heterosexual male, asked to replace a hot female actress with a pudgy male one. Depending on your answer, there may be a fine.

      Thank You,

      The Internetz

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  3. Re:In other news... by networkzombie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Your argument restricting executable code covers a variety of technologies from OLE to html email. The same reason these technologies suck is also why they are so popular. On one hand you can embed stuff and do more! On the other hand they can embed stuff and do more.

  4. Re:In other news... by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A lot of the time that executable code is to do shinystuff, like embed fancy animated charts in documents. One of the worst cases of all is in Windows Media, which will happily run scripts (Exploitable scripts) in media files without prompting or informing the user - and will do this based on magic bytes to identify filetype rather than extension. This lead to the proliferation of fake-mp3 malware on p2p networks. The purpose of the scripts is to allow for updating of the DRM technology and to allow for unauthorised media files to automatically direct the player to a website to purchase a licence.