Microsoft Office is Ground-Zero for Zero-Day Exploits

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Microsoft Office is becoming a starting point for exploitation is not a challenge anyone wants to win. Tragically for Microsoft, Office is becoming platform for exploiting vulnerabilities, according to latest report from Menlo Security.

Malicious Microsoft Office documents attached to emails as an mean to deliver a malicious payloads is not new, but according to reports it is very effective.

Indeed, even while the reports were being made, another zero-day misuse – CVE-2018-5002 – was unveiled, all while two Flash zero-day vulnerabilities kept being exploited out there.

“There is likely to be an increase in attacks via malevolent email attachments using stealthily embedded, remotely hosted malicious components that leverage application and operating system vulnerabilities, both old and new,” the report stated.

The experts found that all ongoing zero-day attacks have been conveyed through Microsoft Word. “With CVE-2018-8174 and CVE-2018-5002, the attackers leveraged Word as a vector to exploit Adobe Flash Player and Internet Explorer. By using Word as the vector, the attackers were able to exploit a browser, even if it is not the default browser, and exploit Flash, even though Flash is blocked by most enterprises,” according to the report.

“Microsoft is therefore undoubtedly going to become the platform that attackers leverage most to deliver their zero-day exploits,” it is concluded in the report.

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