Shane wrote:
> http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6...ml?tag=nl.e589
>
>
> Its the same old same old, dont open documents from untrusted sources
>
> The vulnerability was confirmed in Word 2003, Symantec said. The malicious
> file caused Word 2000 to crash, but did not run the malicious payload, it
> added.
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archiv...20/429612.aspx
A quick check-in on the Word vulnerability
Hi everyone, Stephen Toulouse here again. I wanted to catch you up on
where we're at with our investigation of the Word vulnerability.
First off on the vulnerability itself: I want to reiterate we're hard
at work on an update. The attack vector here is Word documents
attached to an email or otherwise delivered to a user's computer.
The user would have to open it first for anything to happen. That
information isn't meant to say the issue isn't serious, it's just
meant to clearly denote the scope of the threat.
Now, we've received singular reports of attacks and have been working
directly with the couple of customers thus far affected. In analyzing
the malware we've added detection to the Windows Live Safety Center,
and we've passed all that information over to our antivirus partners.
But in breaking down the current malware we discovered some
commonality to the current attack. The attack we've seen is email
based. The emails tend to arrive in groups, they often have fake
domains that are similar to real domains of the targets, but the
targets are valid email addresses.
Currently two of the subject lines we have seen are:
Notice
RE Plan for final agreement
The attack we have seen so far requires admin rights, so limitations on
user accounts can help here. I want to repeat that customers who
believe they are affected can contact Product Support Services. You
can contact Product Support Services in North America for help with
security update issues or viruses at no charge using the PC Safety line
(1866-PCSAFETY) and international customers by using any method found
at this location:
http://support.microsoft.com/security.
So far, this is a *very* limited attack, and most of our antivirus
partners are rating this as "low". But we're working to
investigate any variants we might see to make sure detection is out
there, as well as working on the update to address the vulnerability.
S.
PS: Michael Howard recently wrote a great article for not running as
admin. It can be found here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/security/s...re01182005.asp
