{"id":18,"date":"2006-07-14T07:53:06","date_gmt":"2006-07-14T06:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/2006\/07\/14\/powerpoint-problem-remote-takeover\/"},"modified":"2006-07-14T07:53:06","modified_gmt":"2006-07-14T06:53:06","slug":"powerpoint-problem-remote-takeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/powerpoint-problem-remote-takeover\/","title":{"rendered":"PowerPoint Problem &#8211; remote takeover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s old news that you shouldn&#8217;t open Email attachments you weren&#8217;t expecting from people you don&#8217;t know. I have tech-head friends who won&#8217;t even try and fix your computer if you do because, in their words, &#8220;You&#8217;re too stupid to own a computer anyway&#8221;. Harsh!<\/p>\n<p>But up until now I&#8217;ve thought that PowerPoint files were safe &#8211; well, in terms of computer security at least, if not in terms of their content!<\/p>\n<p>This week however, Microsoft released <a target=\"_blank\" title=\"Powerpoint problem\" href=\"http:\/\/www.symantec.com\/enterprise\/security_response\/writeup.jsp?docid=2006-071212-4413-99&#038;tabid=1\">this notice<\/a> (about <em> Trojan.PPDropper.B<\/em> &#8211; along with the steps needed to remove it from your Windows system). According to other sources, opening a hostile PowerPoint file can result in your PC&#8217;s security being compromised and the machine being taken over and potentially used maliciously (which can happen without you knowing much about it!). The level of risk and damage isn&#8217;t thought to be high, but the inconvenience can be huge.<\/p>\n<p>Like I say, you have to open the file in the &#8216;old fasioned way&#8217; of spreading problems from one computer to another, but it&#8217;s the first time I know of that <strong><em>PowerPoint<\/em><\/strong> files have been used in this way, so it&#8217;s a caution that bears repeating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s old news that you shouldn&#8217;t open Email attachments you weren&#8217;t expecting from people you don&#8217;t know. I have tech-head friends who won&#8217;t even try and fix your computer if you do because, in their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}