Comments on: Office hit by another security problem

Attackers could commandeer a vulnerable computer by embedding a malicious Flash file in an Office document.

[Anon-Y-mous]

Time for class action lawsuit (And Apple to sell MacOSX separately)

First it's clear that after about 20 high profile vulnerabilities announced in just the last 2 weeks against Windows and Office, that MS needs to be sued by EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER OWNER for selling defective software.

Before you say "it's not MS that is doing bad things, it's bad people who do bad things"....Think of a bank knowingly having a bad lock, or a window (no pun intended) breakage sensor that is bad because they were too cheap to invest in a better one. If someone breaks in and steals your stuff from the deposit box, you can bet that bank would be liable and would be sued if they didn't compensate you for your loss.

MS needs to be sued out of existance. It's already happening on a small basis (EU in particular) but needs to happen on a much larger basis before EVERYONE in the world has their identity stolen thanks to Windows and Office.

And now, Mr. Steve Jobs, would be an EXCELLENT time for you to break away from your past and sell your operating system separate from your hardware. Your sales would go through the roof! Even if ONLY IPOD owners purchased it (which I'm willing to bet 50%+ would), that would be enough to unseat Windows after only a few years.

Think of it... Apple could take out Microsoft *AND* any chance of Google competing with one simple step. SELL YOUR OS SEPARATELY!!!!

And they could easily charge $400 for it vs the $200 for Windows and there would be tons of people willing to pay that (look at the IPOD comapred to the MP3/WMA clones). There would be no need to sell hardware, but they still could customize it.

Think about it.... MS Stock would plummet to $10 the day after the announcement, guarenteed.

We're halfway there

With Boot Camp, Parallels and the Intel Mac line being completed soon, Apple is halfway there.
http://www.techknowcafe.com/content/view/527/42/

[NotParker]

Apple?

Apple? Secure? The Apple who had 31 vulnerabilities, most of which all arbitrary code execution?

http://www.frsirt.com/english/advisories/2006/1779

Most of the recent Windows vulnerabilites need user interaction - you need to download a malicious office document from the web.

Most of the Apple ones are exploitable without user intervention.

Have you sued Apple?

[NotParker]

Apple? Hundreds of vulnerabilities!

http://www.frsirt.com/english/vendor/229

Notice the word "multiple" multiple times!

Yuck. What an insecure OS!

[Johnny Mnemonic]

My appologies...

Hope you don't take this too personally:

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/apple.php

[kieranmullen]

Time for openoffice.org ?

Time to give that office suite a try. It has pretty much everything you need. Bugs WILL be found and patched sooner. Free too!

KM

[Captain_Spock]

It Is About "Time" that....

... Open Office's "Calc" and Microsoft Office's "Excel" return the "feathers" that were borrowed from Lotus SmartSuite's "Lotus 1-2-3" since they are both not up to the job of flying "very high" in the dynamic "internet" age in which the world is revolving today... just take the example of the story on this CNET NEWS site Re: "Boeing evaluating fate of in-flight Net service" which states in part, "The company is evaluating Connexion to assess what's best for both the business and our customers," Boeing spokesman John Dern said."; the question is - whose "tools" (90% market share's or Open Office's) are they evaluating with! This article also states ""We know we have a useful product, but we're trying to determine how good a business we have," he said." an easy answer for Microsoft and Boeing - Open Source the "products"!

http://news.com.com/Boeing+evaluating+fate+of+in-flight+Net+service/2100-1034_3-6087222.html?tag=nefd.top

[wbenton]

Report it like it should be:

Incorrect:

>>>not a vulnerability but an Office feature<<<

Correct:

An vulnerable Office feature!

It is vulnerable and thus one cannot go around saying not a vulnerability when in fact it is... it also just so happens to be a feature.

But then so are oodles of other security weaknesses in Microsoft products... they're all features which are full of bugs, vulnerabilities and other kinds of security weaknesses.

Walt