Major security hole found in Microsoft Office product
A Healthcare InfoTech Staff Report
The Bible says, "my people perish for lack of knowledge," and it turns out that so do computer systems, particularly when it comes to viruses and unplugged security holes. Users of Microsoft Office may have missed the fact that a glaring hole in security is created by the Office Suite, providing would-be intruders access to an entire system at the operating system level, using Office as an intermediate surrogate for the attack. This exists with even the newest versions of Office software, as well as some older ones.
Any computers running Office and having Internet access need to immediately download a patch from Microsoft that will close this hole, the largest and most serious security hole ever found in Office/Explorer/Outlook products.
This "fix" should not be considered optional; rather, it is essential to restore the security of a system and any networks to which it may be attached. Any computer on a corporate network that is not updated with this patch, creates a security hole and access point to the entire network. This issue takes on even more importance in a large, intranet corporate setting, particularly healthcare enterprises that may have hundreds to thousands of workstations, many of which may use Microsoft Office in addition to other specialized medical applications.
Woody Leonard at www.WOPR.com made us aware of the problem, and also got the attention of Microsoft in expediting preparation of a patch to resolve the problem. Leonard is the author of many books on Microsoft Office, including the "Mother of All Office" series, and also does a monthly magazine article series as well.
Microsoft is to be commended for its prompt response on this one. The company analyzed the problem and made a patch available in about two weeks, record time.
You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content