Hello everyone –
We’re really excited to announce that Office File Validation, currently part of Office 2010, will soon be made available for Office 2003 and 2007.
During development of Office 2010, the Office Team, in conjunction with members of the Microsoft Engineering Center (MSEC) organization, performed a number of actions to increase protections for file parsing code.
First released in Office 2010, Office File Validation provides a check of file-format binary schema as each file is being read. If it detects an issue, it opens the file in Protected View. This helps prevent unknown binary file format attacks using Microsoft Office 97-2003 file formats for Word, Excel, Publisher, and PowerPoint. For more information, see the Security video below.
Today we are excited to announce Office File Validation will be made available for Office 2003 and 2007 in the first quarter of next year. We are announcing it now so customers can begin preparing to deploy it. In the coming weeks, we will be providing more information on deployment and configuration as well as giving a more definitive release date.
Thanks,
Carlene Chmaj
Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, Senior Response Communications Manager