Microsoft Office Security Holes
(With the help of little Billy!)

-written by PromilleHunter, member of KAOZ-


Password?!? What do I need a passord for?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Besides many known security breaches (for example GUID or 'unwanted data') found in Microsoft Office, there is - to the best of my knowledge - one more undocumented leak present, found in all versions of MS Word and MS Exel. The wide use of these programs on the Mac suggests this bug is being used for less than honest purposes there also.

Having found no reference to it, I'll attempt to fix this oversight by first giving a description and then an example. Enjoy!

Taking advantage of this gap - rather giant hole - is easy, simple and fast. To do away with any misunderstandings right away, access to the target computer as well as MS Word (or another MS Product) is a must.

When these prerequisits are met, background information has to be gathered, for instance what security systems etc. are in place to protect that computer.

Usually this is not especially difficult since many systems display a
catchy logo, a start-up icon/loginScreen or their name contains something along the line of 'lock' or 'protect' or 'startup' or simular.

Equipped with that info, start Word, choose MS Office 98 from the menu, open, then find 'data' in the dialog box, or 'data manager' in earlier versions. There you choose the desired file, then 'all data,' look for its name (or parts of it) and decide which one of the found files may be the culprit (in most cases an extension.) Simply drag it quietly into the Trash (with the help of the pop-up menu 'commands') and voilà it is protecting no more.

After restarting, you have a virgin, apple-issued, unadultered system available to you. Should you put back in place the extension after you have done your dirty deed, not even the Almighty will notice the Hack.


Example: OnGuard
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Using this particular bug, it took me only 3 min, 20 sec and restart to put the system out of commision, and that was 'on sight.'

First, I used ResEdit to look in the extensions and quickly found what I was looking for: 'OnGuard start up' and 'OnGuard locker' certainly didn't belong to Photoshop...  Therefore, I went to the kindly installed MSWord in order to rescue the Mac with little Bill's help. There, as explained above, I sent 'OnGuard' on a trip to 'Endsville'  and enabled the comp to have a new start. That was it, really!

Backing out, I only had to erase the relevant entries from the log, and put back the extensions where they had been previously.

There are a dozen other ways to disable OnGuard  (for example, throwing out the pref. and log in as Administrator/admin,) but In my opinion this is the most elegant.

In and out - quietly, safely, quickly - what more would you want?!? ;)


send suggestions, comments and compliments =) to:
Promillehunter@Hotmail.com