In a statement released by Microsoft last Tuesday, they’ve confirmed that a vulnerability in versions of spreadsheet program Microsoft Excel can get you hacked. The vulnerable versions are as follows: Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Service Pack 2, Microsoft Office Excel Viewer 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2002, Microsoft Office Excel 2000, and Microsoft Excel 2004 for Mac.

Here are some details pointed out by Microsoft regarding this vulnerability:

• Customers who are running Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Service Pack 2 and have deployed Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment (MOICE) are not affected by this vulnerability.
• An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less affected than users who operate with administrative user rights.
• The vulnerability cannot be exploited automatically through e-mail. For an attack to be successful a user must open an attachment that is sent in an e-mail message.
• In a Web-based attack scenario, an attacker would have to host a Web site that contains a specially crafted Excel file that is used to attempt to exploit this vulnerability. In addition, compromised Web sites and Web sites that accept or host user-provided content could contain specially crafted content that could exploit this vulnerability. An attacker would have no way to force users to visit these Web sites. Instead, an attacker would have to persuade users to visit the Web site, typically by getting them to click a link in an e-mail message or Instant Messenger message that takes users to the attacker’s site.
• Users who have installed and are using the Office Document Open Confirmation Tool for Office 2000 will be prompted with Open, Save, or Cancel before opening a specially crafted document that is attempting to exploit this vulnerability.

So far, Microsoft advises users of these versions to beef up their security by installing firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware software.

View the Security Advisory here (947563).