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December 29, 2008

Displaying the Following Year in a Word Document

Although not as powerful as using a VBA macro, Microsoft Word fields are quite powerful on their own, without the security worries of using a macro.

In your case, as you have discovered, it is quite easy to display the current year. The field code to show the current year only would be:

{ DATE \@ "yyyy" \* MERGEFORMAT }

In order to increment the result from the DATE field, you have to nest that result into another field. You end up with one field serving as a parameter for another field.

To get the following year, use the SUM field with the result of DATE field as one of its parameters. The final code will look like this:

{ =SUM({ DATE \@ "yyyy" \* MERGEFORMAT }, 1) }

Word uses the F9 key, in conjunction with the shift, Alt, and CTRL keys, to work with fields.

Key Function
F9 Update fields
Shift+F9 Toggle this field only
CTRL+F9 Add field
Alt+F9 Toggle all fields
    To insert the nest fields, follow these steps:
  1. Press CTRL+F9 to insert a new field (Word inserts the curly braces for you to indicate you are creating a field)
  2. Type =SUM(,1)
  3. Press your left arrow key three times to place your cursor in front of the comma and press CTRL+F9 to insert a nest field
  4. Type DATE \@ "yyyy" \* MERGEFORMAT
  5. Press F9 to update the fields
  6. Press Alt+F9 to toggle the fields to show results

Posted by Westley Annis at 10:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 16, 2008

Microsoft Out-of-Band Security Update

A Microsoft out-of-band security update is one released outside of the once monthly schedule that Microsoft adheres to for security patches.

Almost all computer software is going to have some kind of security flaws, especially something as complicated as Internet Explorer. Being as popular as it is in terms of installed base, hackers tend to focus their efforts on finding flaws to exploit.

When Microsoft released Windows 98, they also included a "Windows Update" system that made it easy for users to update their systems which was great for home users but turned out to be not so great for corporate users. Some of those early updates tended to "break" other software and forced corporate IT support personnel to try and "unbreak" the latest update.

Since Microsoft was releasing the updates as they developed them, IT departments had no way to prepare for an update or to keep track of what updates Microsoft had released.

To reduce the cost of maintaining updated systems, Microsoft switched to releasing updates once a month on the second Tuesday of the month, also known as Patch Tuesday, with a bulletin released three days before the patches announcing what products the updates would cover.

Although hackers are constantly trying to find some flaw in Microsoft products to take advantage of, many security researchers are doing the same thing. To protect the public, when one of the researchers discovers a flaw, they will alert Microsoft and allow Microsoft time to develop a patch before announcing their findings to the public. It's when a hacker finds the flaw before one of the researchers and uses it to attack the general public that it becomes what's known as a "zero-day flaw" i.e., a flaw that Microsoft has not had a chance to work on before it becomes public knowledge.

Most often, it is these zero-day flaws that Microsoft will release an out-of-band update for, especially if it is considered a critical threat.

Bonus question: How does Microsoft classify a threat?

Microsoft will give a threat one of four ratings.

RatingDefinition

Critical

A vulnerability whose exploitation could allow the propagation of an Internet worm without user action.

Important

A vulnerability whose exploitation could result in compromise of the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of users data, or of the integrity or availability of processing resources.

Moderate

Exploitability is mitigated to a significant degree by factors such as default configuration, auditing, or difficulty of exploitation.

Low

A vulnerability whose exploitation is extremely difficult, or whose impact is minimal.

Posted by Westley Annis at 4:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 14, 2008

Adding the file path to a Word 2007 Document

To add the file path and name to a Word 2007 document follow these steps (previous versions of Word are similar)


Posted by Westley Annis at 11:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack