Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 5:09 am Post subject: Windows virus known at Neooffice
Dear all
Hve downloaded Neooffice upon a recommendation in the Apple forum and am quite pleased how it looks like.
Can y let me know if windows viruses could sneak into my Mac and cause havoc or would a virus in a Windows attachement, opened with NeoOffice in a Mac environment have no chance?
Joined: May 31, 2003 Posts: 219 Location: French Alps
Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:17 am Post subject:
jakeOSX wrote:
you should not be able to get a windows virus because the are not written in such a way that they would work on MacOSX.
Right, like the biological metaphor suggests, a virus if targeted for a kind : Windows.
A malicious embeded macro can harm some files if allowed to run (say no in any warning from such files). No more.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:01 am Post subject:
The majority of Windows viruses that affect Macs are ones that just DDoS us or spam us. Windows-specific virii can't infect other operating systems. Microsoft Office viruses can infect Macs, however, such as the nefarious "Word macro viruses". These are written in Visual Basic for Applications and are embedded in Microsoft Office documents. Since Office v.X can run VBA, it can be infecte by these macro viruses.
Neither OpenOffice.org nor NeoJ can execute VBA code, so Word (or other Microsoft Office based "viruses") macros can't execute.
As far as I know, there are no known macro viruses that use OOo Basic as an implementation language. If you're paranoid about receiving any of these non-existent ones, though, you do have the option of halting all macro execution:
1) Launch NeoJ (or OOo...steps are the same on all platforms)
2) Tools > Options
3) Go to the "Security" pane
4) Turn "Run macro" to "Never"
Disabling macros will prevent some features from working, however, like autopilots and some complex documents.
You can also turn off some of the other features of OOo although some of them, like plugins and embedded applets, are not implemented for either NeoJ or for OOo X11 on OS X.
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