Title

Disable Automatic receiving of small updates to improve reliability - Office. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Office Diagnostics is used to improve the user experience by periodically downloading a small file to the computer with updated help information about specific problems. If Office Diagnostics is enabled, it collects information about specific errors and the IP address of the computer. When new help information is available, that help information is downloaded to the computer that experienced the related problems. Office Diagnostics does not transmit any personally identifiable information to Microsoft other than the IP address of the computer requesting the update. By default, users have the opportunity to opt into receiving updates from Office Diagnostics the first time they run a 2007 Office application. If your organization has policies that govern the use of external resources such as Office Diagnostics, allowing users to opt in to this feature might cause them to violate these policies.

Check Content

The policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2007 system -> Privacy -> Trust Center “Automatically receive small updates to improve reliability” will be set to “Disabled”. Procedure: Use the Windows Registry Editor to navigate to the following key: HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common Criteria: If the value UpdateReliabilityData is REG_DWORD = 0, this is not a finding.

Fix Text

The policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2007 system -> Privacy -> Trust Center “Automatically receive small updates to improve reliability” will be set to “Disabled”. "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-18922r1_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-17740

Group Title:

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

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