{"id":4089,"date":"2011-03-29T15:54:05","date_gmt":"2011-03-29T14:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/4089-how-an-rtf-file-can-install-a-virus-when-opened.html"},"modified":"2011-03-29T15:54:05","modified_gmt":"2011-03-29T14:54:05","slug":"how-an-rtf-file-can-install-a-virus-when-opened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/4089-how-an-rtf-file-can-install-a-virus-when-opened.html","title":{"rendered":"How an RTF file can install a virus when opened"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is an analysis by Rob Rachwald over on the Imperva Data Security Blog<\/a> of how an RTF document can carry a virus, in this case a trojan executable. RTF (RIch Text Format) is generally considered safer than the Microsoft Office .DOC format since it cannot include macros; but the vulnerability in this case<\/a> is in the software that parses the RTF when it is opened in Microsoft Office on Windows or Mac – though in this case the actual payload is Windows-only so would not normally affect Mac users.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately this code may run when previewing a document in Outlook, which normally embeds Word, so it is potentially rather damaging.<\/p>\n

Rachwald traces how the embedded trojan evades anti-virus, installs itself into the Windows system32 folder, and creates a remote shell application.<\/p>\n

It does appear that the vulnerability was patched in November 2010. Still, it is interesting that the insecure code survived in Microsoft Office at least back to Office XP Server Pack 3 in 2004 and probably earlier.<\/p>\n

I mention it partly because the analysis is a good read, and partly to highlight the fact that even RTF documents may not be safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is an analysis by Rob Rachwald over on the Imperva Data Security Blog of how an RTF document can carry a virus, in this case a trojan executable. RTF (RIch Text Format) is generally considered safer than the Microsoft Office .DOC format since it cannot include macros; but the vulnerability in this case is … Continue reading How an RTF file can install a virus when opened<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,67,75,80,97],"tags":[586,789,810,996],"class_list":["post-4089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microsoft","category-professional","category-security","category-software-development","category-windows","tag-microsoft","tag-rtf","tag-security","tag-windows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}