[MacTUG] FYI: Microsoft confirms Office for Mac 2008 snafu

[Glenn Anderson]

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do? 
command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9058840&intsrc=hm_list

Microsoft confirms Office for Mac 2008 snafu

Potential security problem crops up after file-access assignments go  
awry

By Gregg Keizer


January 24, 2008 (Computerworld) Office for Mac 2008 incorrectly  
assigns ownership of some files, Microsoft Corp. has confirmed,  
creating a potential security problem for businesses installing the  
new application suite.

Joel Bruner, a Chicago-based Mac consultant, was the first to notice  
the ownership snafu. "[Microsoft] moved to Apple's Package Maker  
(.pkg) installer files, good news for the enterprise, [but]  
unfortunately, they've created all the packages to install most all  
of the files with the owner set to 502."

In a shop where employees run with limited privileges -- a practice  
very common in companies -- and IT is the only user with full  
administrative rights, Office 2008's ownership assignment means that  
a user who wasn't supposed to have complete control over those files  
actually does. In other words, whomever is assigned user ID 502 has  
full read/write access to Office's files.


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