Re: dangerous WORD macros

[Doug Craigen <dcc@CYBERSPC.MB.CA>]

Stuewer David wrote:
> So...can I take that to mean it is no longer wise to open Word documents
> that are attached to email?

Word documents aren't the only ones that can contain harmful macros.  In
fact, you take a risk any time you open any document that may contain a
macro which you didn't write yourself.  I consider it advisable to turn
off automatic running of macros in all relevant software and ask to be
prompted instead.  Not very convenient I know (but neither are condoms -
we are talking "safe-hex" here).  In fact, a good alternative is to get
a viewer which can read a variety of spreadsheet, word processor,
database... formats but without running macros, and use that as your
default reader for attachments.

If you have up-to-date anti-virus software you have some level of
protection - but if you think about how much Melissa did within a week
(and how many people update their anti-virus software more often than
once a week?) you will realize that there are still limits to your
safety.  The anti-virus software also will not protect you against
errors that may have damaging consequences in somebody's inept macro
writing.

I sometimes wonder if some "viruses" are in fact somebody's
incompetence. We have now made it very easy for people who know nothing
about programming to write programs and send them out.  Many people
don't understand exponential growth - so what if somebody discovers that
they can get a message to automatically send itself to people pulled out
of the local address book, and out of pure ignorance decides this would
be a neat way to spread their message a little bit beyond their
immediate circle of friends?  When you are talking about programming of
any kind, the competence of the programmer is an issue to consider
before running the program.  Look at JavaScript - a "harmless" add on to
html - but one which can crash operating systems (I've found web sites
where the JavaScript will regularly crash one of my computers), prevent
you from getting "back" from a page ... but all without any harm being
intended - just a bit of incompetence.

()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()-()

Doug Craigen
          Latest Project - the Physics E-source
          http://www.dctech.com/physics/