17 July 2006, 14:09

French military believes that OpenOffice needs to be improved

In a one-year test, researchers at the French Ministry of Defense found that the OpenOffice suite has more weak points than its commercial rival Microsoft Office. French media are reporting that a confidential risk analysis conducted at the Laboratory of Virology and Cryptology came to these conclusions; the lab is part of the Ministry's communications unit (Ecole Supérieure et d'Application des Transmissions, ESAT). One example cited is that OpenOffice now executes some macros without any prior notice, and this constitutes a critical weak point.

According to the reports, the researchers developed their own malicious code, including Trojans, and confronted the Open Source office suite with various attack scenarios in their tests. They do not, however, advise French authorities against the use of OpenOffice in general; rather, they conclude that developers have tried to give the office suite as many functions as possible but have not yet devised a mature security concept. The researchers have reportedly already contacted OpenOffice.org to discuss security issues.

(ehe)

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