MS Word and rand()

[draziw]

Ok, this is probably one of those things going around... to me, it's another reason to hate MS...(then again, even vim will do stupid things like this, out of the box on some machines).

Go in to MS Word and type :

=rand(5,10)

Then hit "Enter." (yes, those numbers can be bigger but we'll spare you -- it was initially suggested to me that it should be like (200,99); then again, simply rand() works too, which I think is even more disturbing)


Surprisingly enough, well... this shouldn't do anything malicious to your machine... I mean, it's just text, right?

*sigh*

[LoggOff]

hmmmmm do i sence a M$ word exploit from this little fact? thats scarey.........

[draziw]

Exploit? Well... no... at least I don't think so - I think it'd need a lot more work to make something "bad." I'll refrain from further comment due to some possible minor abuse potential, though...

[LoggOff]

yeah, whats what im talking about, im not talking about one of thos 'full control' exploits im talking about it just exicuting code without your approval...... etc, i dont know what other code that it does but its still anoying

[nebulus200]

I would suspect that the code language underneath it is probably VB or some variant thereof, I remember there is explicit support for it in Access and if memory serves there is an option when installing word for supporting VB or VBscript (can't remember which one) and this is probably what is allowing it to work...

Out of curiosity, do you have that 'feature' installed ?

Neb