Title

Block Office from receiving updates from the Office Update Site. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Obtaining updates from the Office Update site allows users to ensure that their 2007 Microsoft Office installation is kept up to date. However, in many situations administrators will want users to obtain their updates from a local server at the time of their choosing, often by pushing out the updates using a tool such as SMS. This approach allows administrators to ensure greater availability by testing updates, and using a change and configuration management process to ensure that updates are implemented consistently throughout the organization.

Check Content

The policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2007 system -> Miscellaneous “Block updates from the Office Update Site from applying” will be set to “Enabled”. Procedure: Use the Windows Registry Editor to navigate to the following key: HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\Common\OfficeUpdate Criteria: If the value BlockUpdates is REG_DWORD = 1, this is not a finding.

Fix Text

The policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2007 system -> Miscellaneous “Block updates from the Office Update Site from applying” will be set to “Enabled”. "Note: Group Policy Administrative Templates are available from the www.microsoft.com download site. The MS Office 2007 System (Office12.adm) is included in the AdminTemplates.exe file. This template provides the mechanisms to incorporate Microsoft Office 2007 System policies via the Microsoft Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc)." "Note: If the Microsoft Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) is not used to incorporate the remediation to this vulnerability the Microsoft Registry Editor (regedit.exe) may be used to create the registry key and value required."

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-18669r1_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-17565

Group Title:

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

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