Hacker threat posed by Excel spreadsheets

Another XP flaw revealed...

By Pia Heikkila, 28 May 2002 11:20

NEWS A security hole in Excel XP spreadsheets which could lead to a hack attack has been exposed. The discovery was made by independent security expert Georgi Guninski, who said on his website: "Excel XP tries to play with new technologies like XML and XSLT. Unfortunately the Excel seem so flawed that if the user opens a .xls file and chooses to view it with xml stylesheet arbitrary code may be executed. As script kiddies know this may lead to taking full control over a user's computer." Guninski, who has posted a sample of the code in his site, said users should not use XML stylesheets.

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