Microsoft disables the dde function in word to avoid malware attacks

DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) is a communication technology between various applications that works in Windows. Allows one program to log into another program. Microsoft has released the security patch on Tuesday and this update disables the DDE function in Word. The reason is to protect against malware attacks that have taken advantage of this feature in the past.

Microsoft disables the DDE function in Word to prevent malware attacks

This is a function that allows an Office application to load data from others. So it facilitates the use of Word and Excel, for example. It is a feature that has been in the operating system for a long time, although it has been updated, but it has also given users its problems.

DDE is disabled in Word

A report on how the DDE feature could be used to distribute malware was released in October of this year. Also, achieving this was not so complicated. In fact, it is already a function that has given problems in the past, up to the 90s. But, until now it was not seen as a vulnerability. Ultimately, this appears to have changed with this decision.

The reason why DDE was not seen as a problem was that Office shows you warnings before opening a file. But, malware authors managed to sneak into users' computers by abusing this feature. So the company has made a decision that seems logical. This way you avoid problems.

That Microsoft decides to disable DDE in Word is a moment of great importance. Although at the moment it still supports it in Outlook and Excel. But, it looks like it will remain disabled by default. It will be interesting to see if the company decides to do the same with this function in the other Office tools or not.