[29957] in bugtraq
Re: Windows Server 2003 Security Guide available
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lucas Holt)
Tue Apr 29 16:07:00 2003
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 15:45:59 -0400
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To: bugtraq@securityfocus.com
From: Lucas Holt <luke@foolishgames.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.53.0304291105220.7887@shishi.roaringpenguin.com>
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You do not need Microsoft Office to open word documents.. AppleWorks
will do it, and maybe open office/star office? Granted, Microsoft has
a monopoly. I think you can open word documents with Wordpad which is
free (and lousy). If you are reading a windows security document, you
probably have a windows box with wordpad. There used to be a word 97
viewer as well that was free.
Plain text files would be the only "safe" format. Even Acrobat
documents have security problems.
Another thing that troubles me about this debate is MITM attacks
period. Lets face it, any file format is susceptible to this sort of
thing. I could put up a fake microsoft MSDN library website and use
DNS poisoning to give developers bad documentation.
What next? Force users to use SSL for all websites? Stop using the
internet all together?
>
> What I found interesting is that some of the documentation is in
> Microsoft Word or MS Excel format. This implies that to take full
> advantage of the information, you need to own an MS Office license.
> Is this another example of abuse of monopoly? For that matter, are
> .doc
> or .xls documents necessarily safer than .exe's? You decide...
>
> --
> David.
>
Lucas Holt
Luke@FoolishGames.com
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