Use Microsoft Word in safe mode to protect against targeted zero-day attacks.
That’s the advice from Microsoft’s security response team to counter known attacks against a serious code execution vulnerability in the widely used word processing program.
In a pre-patch security advisory, Microsoft said the flaw can be exploited when a user opens a specially crafted Word file using a malformed object pointer.
This corrupts system memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code.
The flaw can be exploited via the Web or via e-mail but, in both scenarios, an attacker would have to trick a user into opening the rigged Word file.
In the absence of a patch, independent security researcher Matthew Murphy has released a registry script fix that sets a Software Restriction Policy that runs any instance of ‘winword.exe’ with the ‘Basic User’ policy.
Read the full story on eWEEK.com: Microsoft: Use MS Word in Safe Mode