Fergie's Tech Blog

Bad Week for Excel: Third Microsoft Excel Exploit Posted

Robert McMillan writes on NetworkWorld:

Excel users have one more reason to worry. On Tuesday, a hacker published code that takes advantage of an unpatched flaw in the Microsoft spreadsheet software, the third such exploit to be disclosed in the past week.

This attack could be used to run unauthorized software on a PC, but it requires that the victim first be tricked into opening an Excel document, according to an alert published on the Securitytracker.com Web site.

The attack takes advantage of Adobe's Flash technology, which can be used to provide graphics and animation to Excel documents. "When the target user opens the Excel file, the [malicious] Flash code will execute automatically without user interaction," the alert states.

posted by Fergie @ 6/21/2006 05:40:00 PM