Detects the third vulnerability in Microsoft Excel

One week, three consecutive critical vulnerabilities were uncovered in Microsoft's popular spreadsheet application.

Picture 1 of Detects the third vulnerability in Microsoft Excel Source: ceintec

Excel users have a reason to worry, when yesterday, a hacker announced the attack code to an unpatched vulnerability in this application. This is also the third consecutive Excel vulnerability discovered in just one week.

The aforementioned proof-of-concept code allows an attacker to run unauthorized malware on a loophole computer, however, first, the user will be forced to open an Excel document, the Securitytracker website said.

They take advantage of a flaw in Adobe System's Flash technology - which is used to display graphics and images for Excel documents. " When users open an Excel file, malicious Flash code will run automatically without any user intervention ," the warning message confirmed.

Why worry?

The latest attack against Excel is really worrying, because the code can be activated automatically without any impact from the user, Juha-Matti Laurio said.

" In fact, embedded malware in Excel files is not very popular, but it doesn't matter, because just opening the file is already sticky. This is the most remarkable point ."

Microsoft security team has had weeks of initial shutdown. Last Tuesday, the company released a patch for a critical flaw in Word applications (exploited by hackers) and is dealing with two attacks of code that exploit two critical vulnerabilities in Excel.

According to SecurityTracker, the vulnerability this time involves many different versions of Excel. In fact, Microsoft discovered the vulnerability in May 45 and temporarily patched it up, but not yet.

There is no comment from Microsoft about this latest warning.

Thien Y