Can a word document contain virus or harm you in any way? Someone sent me a word docx that has only 2 pages, no image but it's 1.7 MB big. If I use save as to save it with a different name but still docx than the duplicated document has only 35 KB. Is there something I'm missing? Can this happen normally? If yes, how can I figure this out?
2 Answers
Yes a Word doc can contain a virus. Rename the DOCX to zip and you can open it with WinZip or another tool.
This will expose all OLE embedded data, however it's possible that the individual files in that Winzip are virus vectors (JPG, etc)
answered Aug 16, 2014 at 13:59
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Nice, I didn't know you can do that :) ... anyway, the zip apparently contains 3 files named font1.odttf, font2 and font3... they each have around 1 MB. This means is everything alright? But it's still a bit strange because the entire document is Arial, no special font...– spaunyCommented Aug 16, 2014 at 14:46
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Really? Can't they be just fonts? If so, then how can I see the code or figure out for certain what they are?– spaunyCommented Aug 16, 2014 at 16:20
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In short, yes a .docx file can have a malicious payload. This typically comes in the form of a malicious VB script or macro embedded within the document.
answered Aug 16, 2014 at 13:39
