Safety Warning for Power Point

Computer Viruses

Experts from the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) have found a serious vulnerability in the popular presentation program Power Point.

Contaminated with harmful files, PowerPoint files could thus get unnoticed on personal computers. Powerpoint is part of the office package "Microsoft Office" and serves to facts in chronological tables, pictures, and graphics display.

A specially crafted PowerPoint file, for example, could arrive as an attachment to a subject as important in the declared e-mail. Loads of unsuspecting users download the file and opens it with his Power Point program, he has probably caught a virus, worm, trojan horse or spyware file. They could spy on its users data, manipulate data, keep the PC for other malicious software or open remote control it as a spam sender.

Mail attachments from strangers is not open

BSI warns therefore against unsolicited e-mail attachments from unknown senders to open. If in doubt they should be deleted sight unseen and not only after consultation with the sender because the address is likely to fake.

More recently similar precarious security gaps in the other MS Office applications Word, Excel, and had appeared. Later than the next "Patch Tuesday" Microsoft wants users the opportunity to close by downloading a safety program ("Patch"), the gap in Powerpoint. This "patch Days" leads from Microsoft since 2003 in a four-week cycle every second Tuesday of the month. Europe falls into the "Patch Tuesday" due to the time difference often found on the following Wednesday.

Free Warning and Information Service

To be informed about any security holes in programs and the latest threats from the Internet regularly, the BSI has set up the website citizen-Cert. This is a free warning and information service for all home users who often have to do on the internet and communicate a lot.

The links to the patch download from Microsoft and other security information can be found directly on the websites of software manufacturers. Direct links are also on the info-web "in the safety net", an initiative of the Federal Ministry of Economics and a leading IT companies and organizations such as Eco, Microsoft, T-Com, eBay, SAP, the German Savings Bank Publishing.