Office 2000 hit with a zero-day attack.

[zekrahminator]

Recognized by both Secunia and Symantec as being very critical threats. A variation on the trojan MDropper.Q allows it to install another trojan, a new variant of Backdoor.Femo. This trojan allows for the remote execution of code on the victims computer.

"As with other recent (Microsoft) Office vulnerabilities, documents incorporating the exploit code must be opened with a vulnerable copy of Microsoft Word 2000 for it to work," Symantec's advisory stated. "As such, it makes the vulnerability unsuitable for the creation of self-replicating network worms."

Microsoft has not patched Office 2000 at this time.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Thermopylae_480]

I'm using office 2003, and Office 2007 Beta. I hope nobody comes out with a similiar idea for these.

 

[Dark Ride]

Reminds me that I need to install Office 2003. Thanks

 

[Alec§taar]

During this period of attacks, I have taken Office 2003 offline, period.

Microsoft will patch it, this you can be certain of though.

There are things you CAN do to help prevent this, especially since Office (epsecially Outlook using WORD as its default email content text editor)!

DO NOT DO THIS!

PREVENTATIVE MEASURE #1:

In Outlook (FULL) options, go to Rich Text Format (.rtf) or straight text format in your emails, & heck with HTML formatted mail since Office & IE integrate like mad & share libs/dlls.

PREVENTATIVE MEASURE #2:

Another GOOD measure is to start WORD (for example) in 'safemode', if you cannot live w/ out Office 2000/XP/2003 for your daily work.

(Personally, I just use wordpad & .rtf files (rich text format & no macro'ing possible in that file format & just as readable/formattable as WORD .doc imo for the most part)).

How to do this?

Change its shortcut commandline!

E.G.-> The default location for theWindows executable is as follows:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\WINWORD.EXE"

add /safe to the end of it (commandline switch).

The default location for theWindows executable is as follows:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\WINWORD.EXE" /safe



(Note the highlited "/safe" switch @ the end of its shortcut commandline)

APK

P.S.=> I am admittedly, not 100% certain that Office 2000 has this switch available to its .exe @ runtime as a switch, but I am fairly sure Office XP does, & Office 2003 for sure... apk

 

[error_f0rce]

Thanks for the info Alec, I went ahead and did step #1.
Now the wait... I'm sure they'll patch this bad boy soon

 

[stealthfighter]

I have office 03 on a dvd somewhere, It's not on my PC. Hack that~!!