Home Technology Microsoft Bug: Users Exposed to Malware Through MS Word Files

Microsoft Bug: Users Exposed to Malware Through MS Word Files

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It has been discovered by the researchers that the security vulnerability of the users of Microsoft has been exposed to malware. The bug which is not fixed yet has affected all the versions of Microsoft’s productivity suite which also includes Office 2016 for Windows 10. The bug can be put into the systems by just opening some of the word files.

Though the vulnerability was first discovered by McAfee, FireEye says that they were aware of it and they had detected it several weeks ago but didn’t publicize till the Microsoft manages to address the issue.

Microsoft Bug: Users Exposed to Malware Through MS Word Files
Microsoft Bug: Users Exposed to Malware Through MS Word Files

“The attack involves a threat actor emailing a Microsoft Word document to a targeted user with an embedded OLE2link object. When the user opens the document, winword.exe issues an HTTP request to a remote server to retrieve a malicious .hta file, which appears as a fake [Rich Text Format] file. The Microsoft [HTML Application] loads and executes the malicious script.” added by FireEye in a blog post.

The bug is related to Object Linking nad Embedding (OLE) feature of Microsoft. McAfee further added that the first attack was detected which took place in January.

There are some measures which will be taken by Microsoft for this bug problem. They will release their next Patch Tuesday security update as soon as possible to fix the situation. They are also planning to introduce Windows 10 Creators Update but users will be able to download the update before its official release.

For the time being precautions and warning have been given by McAfee. The users are said to not open the file from any “untrusted” sources. The problem will soon be fixed.

It is also said that the attack can not bypass the Protected View in Office Application. Therefore users are advised to enable this feature so that the bug can not exploit any further.

Stay tuned to TheCourierDaily for more.

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