Microsoft Issues Zero-Day Attack Alert For Word

[giza]

Microsoft Security Advisory

Coverage in Eweek

Coverage in Slashdot

Affected versions include:

Microsoft Word 2000
Microsoft Word 2002
Microsoft Office Word 2003
Microsoft Word Viewer 2003
Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac
Microsoft Word 2004 v. X for Mac

Merely opening a "rigged" file will cause the exploit to be used.

No reacharounds workarounds are available at this time.

Neo Office for OS/X, on the other hand, is a fine office suite.

Comments

[sr-foxley.livejournal.com]

And OpenOffice ain't that bad either, eh.

[nius.livejournal.com]

Frickin Mac users and their precompiled binaries. I built my copy of OO.o from source, bitch!

(on a mac)

(while surfing porn)

(and editing an iMovie)

(listening to my iTunes)

(TSing in iChat)

(without thrashing swap) ;)

[simbab.livejournal.com]

Ah, gotta love Microsoft's wonderfully designed hacked-together binary document formats.

As for alternatives for Macs and such, soon enough someday there'll be Openoffice.org in Aqua without X11 (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User:Ericb).

I compiled Openoffice.org when I used Gentoo. I'll never do _that_ again. Debian makes that wonderfully unnecessary. Hooray for the pink swirl!

[kellic.livejournal.com]

Thankfully its word...I mean as long as the file is from a legit source and you are a bit careful you should be fine. *shrugs*

You missed the funniest part of this story!

[tailen.livejournal.com]

It's Microsoft's official response to the exploit, and I quote:

"Microsoft suggests that users 'not open or save Word files,' even from trusted sources."

I think they should be forced to print that advice on all the boxes of CDs with Office on them.

MS Office 2006 - DON'T USE THIS PRODUCT!