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Microsoft warns of attacks on new ActiveX hole
Attackers are exploiting a new critical ActiveX hole in Microsoft Office to take control of PCs by luring Internet Explorer users to malicious Web sites, Microsoft said on Monday.
The zero-day hole, the third one announced by Microsoft in less than two months, is in Office Web Components ActiveX controls used to display and publish spreadsheets, charts, and databases to the Web.
It affects Office XP, Office 2003, Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2004 and 2006, as well as Office Small Business Accounting 2006.
The security advisory details a manual workaround, or people can use Microsoft's Fix-It tool to implement the workaround automatically.
Microsoft said it was working on a security update to patch the hole.
Antivirus vendor Sophos, meanwhile, said in a blog posting on its site that it had received reports of several Web sites, mostly in China, serving the exploit as part of a Web exploit kit that downloads and runs a Windows Executable detected as "Mal/Generic-A."
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor. 
Amen
Die Troll Die!
Amen
What does an exploit in MS Office have to do with XP or Vista or IE8???
It affects Vista as well if the particular Office version is installed there.
Last I looked, Vista doesn't come with an office package.
They sure do Apples marketing even security issues with OSX they try to downplay.
You trotted out the figure. Cite your source or face ridicule and shame brought upon your family name for generations to come.
http://cybersecureinstitute.org/blog/?p=15
Oooh burn! Mister "Cite your sources or face shame". I see you do this all the time. Everyone is responsible to cite their sources but you. Why would anyone need to cite their sources about the Evil Empire that is MS anyway? Is it not plainly obvious to all but the most dedicated MS zealots?
Here's another source for you. 60% of businesses to avoid Win7.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/07/13/60pc.of.biz.avoiding.win.7/
Why is that Vegaman? Could it have anything to do with their history of burning anyone that does business with them? People are getting gun shy and for good reason. You can have them. Die Microsoft Die!
Amen
Thank god OSX is so successful in the corporate world.
Oh wait.....
I think you need to reread that article you linked to slapppy. I saw no mention of 10+billion.
That and I won't even go into the useless aspect a blog has on relevant data with no refferences.
You, sir, are imprecise at best, illiterate at worst. You are of by several orders of magnitude.
That said, a few million MORE micro-bots can no longer be news, can it? Especially ANOTHER active-xploit? At some point, doesn't repeated failure create a pattern resulting in predictability?
Why do you always bring up Apple and OSX? Why!?
"Time to add more to that "MICROSOFT TAX" thats currently running 10+Billion with the Conficker worm. "
"You want it? You got it. ZD/Net even posted the data. Or you can get the source here:"
You qouoted a blog... not a real article. And even then you got the figures wrong. It's even several years out of date. Here's the quote:
""To date, the Conficker worm has infected countless computers?estimates range wildly from 200,000 to more than 10 million. "
Now math may not be my strong suit, but 10 million versus 10 billion is a bit ... well, wrong. But don't worry, you were only off by 9.9 BILLION, or incorrect 99.9%. Now you can see why I challenged you on it. :)
@BogusBasin:
You may want to look at the sources you're citing. I don't mean the Reuters news article/blog, but the sources that THEY are using. And I mean by that by doing your research to get the real source, not what someone tells you.
Here's the resons for the 60% figure you are trotting out:
"Many of the more than 1,000 companies that responded to a survey by ScriptLogic Corp say they have economized by cutting back on software updates and lack the resources to deploy Microsoft's latest offering."
""Forty-two percent said their biggest reason for avoiding Windows 7 was a "lack of time and resources.""
They don't say anything about Windows 7 being an issue, only that the companies surveyed are in a conservatin mode at this time and aren't looking at *any* OS purchase or upgrade and that includes OS X and Linux.
I'm sorry, but if you want to play the game, you have to play with the big boys with actual reasearch. By the way, note that the survey company did the survey for a fee, but they are not saying who paid for the survey or what the purpose was for. THAT would be very interesting to find out, wouldn't you say?
Yes, I will challenge people when they trot out numbers or figures that I question the validity. You tossed out a link blindly, perhaps hoping nobody would look at that link, or what the source of that article was or to follow the bread crumbs to the original content which is quite different from what you made of it. You have to be willing to go to the real source and not let others do it for you. In this case... I'm sorry, but you got called for BS and caught as well.
Security: "Let's deprecate ActiveX because of security problems"
MS: "But they're so convenient! We can't inconvenience users!"
microsoft.com
If anyone finds any other sites that use them, please reply.
Huh? Michael Jackson did everything possible to remove any trace of his ancestry to race and distance himself from all those that made him successufl.
I think there were plenty of succesful black entertainers before Jackson... all whom deserve far more respect.
Google for "Jackson Five", then get back to me. Their first national performance was somewhere around 1968 if that helps.
"I think there were plenty of succesful black entertainers before Jackson..."
Successful with which demographics? I don't doubt the legions of Jazz near-demigods and early rock pioneers like Little Richard, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, et al, but look at the 'mainstream' demographic, and you'll find five black kids there, led by the youngest of them.
Personally, I'm not all that into the guy's music, but saying that he did nothing to promote racial equality is pretty frickin' ignorant of history at large.
One more reason to block all China domains at the firewall.
- by JoeF2 July 13, 2009 5:09 PM PDT
- The real problem is of course the abomination called ActiveX.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(52 Comments)It is high time that MS removes ActiveX from their OS offerings.
Content from the outside world should never have access to the whole OS. Security 101. Everybody except MS has known that for decades. But MS probably sees the introduction of a sandbox model as another "milestone" for IE...