Microsoft Word Is Under A Hack Attack: Do Not Open Documents Named .RTF Microsoft on Monday issued an emergency security warning saying that hackers have found a way to booby-trap certain common Word file with the extension.rtf. Microsoft says its aware of attacks going on now, but theres no fix yet to stop the hackers. Its working on a way to stop the bug. The only way to be sure your computer wont get infected is to not open a document with the .rtf extension until Microsoft says its fine to do so. This is the very worst kind of attack. A hacker that manages to get people to open the booby-trapped file can gain control of your computer. From there, the hacker can do all kinds of things. For instance, the hacker can turn your computer into a so-called zombie by putting it on an illegal botnet. That means hackers can use your computer as part of a bigger network of computers to do all kinds of illegal things, like sending spam, spreading viruses, or committing fraud. Even more scary is that the hack could work even in preview mode. Thats where you dont actually open the file, but view it in an email instead. Outlook, for instance, lets you preview attachments. Microsoft is currently recommending that you block all .rtf documents from your computer. It released a free tool which will set that up for you. While .rtf files are not the default for Microsoft Word, (the default is .docx or .doc), this is not a strange or unusual type of document. RTF stands for rich text format. For instance, its the default file format used by TextEdit, the free word processing app that comes with a Mac. If people tend to email you a lot of Word documents, and you dont want to block all .rtf documents, another good choice is to set up your email to be in text mode, recommends security blogger Paul Ducklin via the Sophos security blog. The downside: this can make formatted emails, like newsletters, more difficult to read.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 11:53:53 +0000
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