COMMAND

    MS Word

SYSTEMS AFFECTED

    Word97

PROBLEM

    Thomas  Lakofski  found  following.   He  recently  noticed, while
    dealing with  a macro  virus going  around my  office (too new for
    latest  av  software),  that  word  97's  'macro virus protection'
    feature  doesn't  work  when  printing  documents  directly   from
    explorer.  Normal scenario:

        1) open document
        2) word pops up macro warning dialog
        3) click 'disable'
        4) open visual basic  editor and delete the  module containing
           the virus

    But, if like Thomas was,  you're printing a few documents  and one
    happens to have a virus:

        1) select multiple documents
        2) right click, select 'print' context menuitem
        3) word  opens  each  document  sequentially and prints  them,
           including the document  with a virus  in it.   Word doesn't
           ask about the macros in this document, just goes ahead  and
           enables them anyway.
        4) You  now  have  a  macro  virus  in my normal.dot, with  no
           indication of ever having run a macro-containing file.

    Emils Klotins added  following.  MS  Word 6.0 has  a macro checker
    template  downloadable  from  Microsoft  web site, which basically
    does the same thing as the Word '97 macro protection feature.   He
    noted that the  Word 6.0 template  did not check  files opened via
    recent files menu, i.e. via File | 1 or 2 etc.

    Whilst on this, don't  be fooled by the  talk of signed macros  in
    Office 2000.  In their  attempt to "assist" users, the  people who
    designed the signing  procedure decided that  if you had  a signed
    project and it changed,  you would want the  changes automatically
    signed.   Thus, signed  but infected  VBA code  will eventually be
    doing the rounds...  Judicious use of the macro security  settings
    should  all  but  eliminate   this  problem,  but  whether   macro
    developers will actually  do the right  thing here is  a wide open
    question at the moment (by Nick FitzGerald).

SOLUTION

    Dunno.