G'day Bob

18 Apr 04 22:32, Bob Lawrence wrote to David Drummond:

 DD>> At work, I open .DOCs with Word, and .XLSs with Excel. With the
 DD>> default settings they advise me of any embedded macros, and ask
 DD>> if I wish to run them. Unless I know the origins of the
 DD>> document, I click "no".

 BL>  And what if the formatting is then totally stuffed? Aren't you
 BL> tempted to go back and click "yes?" After all, you can
see it's just 
 BL> a harmless readme file...

Not if it has macros - harmless readmes don't require macros...

 BL>  Okay, so you look up the macro and it's called something harmless,
 BL> and you open the macro and it's jsut a whole lot of stuff about
 BL> formatting (with one unseen line, "shell c:\cookies\123456.cke")  

I don't have a directory called c:\cookies...

 DD>> Having an up-to-date virus checker helps one's confidence.

 BL>  A virus checker won't find a "harmless" macros that runs a trojan
 BL> hidden somewhere else. It's not a virus. In fact, it's plain text.

I don't execute macros in unknown documents. Even if I did, the
"trojan hidden somewhere else" would get caught by the virus
checker when it was loaded for execution (assuming that it was known by the
virus checker).

I update my virus checker dat files several time per week.

Regards,
David

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