Microsoft releases MOICE and File Block Functionality tools for MS Office users

Microsoft releases MOICE and File Block Functionality tools for MS Office users

Software giant Microsoft has announced the availability of two software tools designed to protect the users of their MS Office productivity suite.

The company said that these tools have been designed to protect the users from Office “zero-day” attacks, which take advantage of vulnerabilities before a patch is released by Microsoft.

The first tool has been named Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment (MOICE) and it is available for the users running Office 2003 and 2007 Office.

This tool prevents any kind of attack by converting Office 2003 binary files to the Office Open XML format used by 2007 Office. Microsoft claimed that this conversion takes place inside an “isolated environment” which would prevent any malicious code from running on the computer.

The second tool released by the company is called File Block Functionality. This is also available for just the Microsoft Office 2003 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

It allows the system administrators the ability to define which file types can and cannot be opened by users.

More details in the Microsoft Security Advisory: Release of Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment (MOICE) and File Block Functionality for Microsoft Office