Title

Allow users with earlier versions of Office to read with browsers - System (Cat II impact)

Discussion

The Windows Rights Management Add-on for Internet Explorer provides a way for users who do not use the 2007 Office release to view, but not alter, files with restricted permissions. By default, IRM-enabled files are saved in a format that cannot be viewed by using the Windows Rights Management Add-on. If this setting is enabled, an embedded rights-managed HTML version of the content is saved with each IRM-enabled file, which can be viewed in Internet Explorer using the add-on. This configuration increases the size of rights-managed files, in some cases significantly.

Check Content

The policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2007 system -> Manage Restricted Permissions “Allow users with earlier versions of Office to read with browsers” 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\DRM Criteria: If the value IncludeHTML is REG_DWORD = 0, this is not a finding.

Fix Text

The policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2007 system -> Manage Restricted Permissions “Allow users with earlier versions of Office to read with browsers” 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-18782r1_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-17583

Group Title:

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

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