Microsoft reveals hole in Excel

Microsoft has revealed that hackers have found a way to infiltrate older versions of its Excel program to take control of infected computer systems.

Earlier in the week, the software major said it's investigating reports of such attacks though hasn't yet determined whether it will go ahead and patch the bug, and if so, when.

Q) How will it infiltrate the anti-virus cordon and how can you protect your PC from it ?
Ans) The modus operandi is: you may either get a specially crafted Excel file as an email attachment or may end up visiting a compromised Web site -- either ways, you could be inviting hackers to arbitrarily take control of your PCs for furthering their malicious cause, be it stealing passwords and other personal information or sending out spam.

Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Service Pack 2, Excel Viewer 2003, Excel 2002, Excel 2000, and Excel 2004 for Mac, are all vulnerable to this form of attack, Microsoft said.

The way to go for users, as advised by Redmond, is to use a tool named 'Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment', which scans files for bad code before opening them.

Meanwhile, more recent versions of Excel such as Excel 2007, Excel 2007 SP 1, and Excel 2008 for Mac are believed not to be vulnerable.