Title

Office client polling of Sharepoint servers published links must be disabled. (Cat II impact)

Discussion

Users of Office applications can see and use links to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server sites from those applications. Administrators configure published links to Office applications during initial deployment, and can add or change links as part of regular operations. These links appear on the My SharePoint Sites tab of the Open, Save, and Save As dialog boxes when opening and saving documents from these applications. Links can be targeted so that they only appear to users who are members of particular audiences. If a malicious person gains access to the list of published links, they could modify the links to point to unapproved sites, which could make sensitive data vulnerable to exposure.

Check Content

The policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2010 -> Server Settings “Disable the Office client from polling the SharePoint Server for published links” must be set to “Enabled”. Procedure: Use the Windows Registry Editor to navigate to the following key: HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\14.0\common\portal Criteria: If the value LinkPublishingDisabled is REG_DWORD = 1, this is not a finding.

Fix Text

Set the policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2010 -> Server Settings “Disable the Office client from polling the SharePoint Server for published links" to “Enabled”.

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-33471r1_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-17670

Group Title: DTOO208 - Office client polling from Office Server

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.