Scary Macro Stories
Many news items have described terrible viruses and worms written in VB
Script and Visual Basic. Some of the malevolent code shut down email servers by
overloading them, some erased critical information from hard drives. The hoaxes
about viruses alone have wasted untold amounts of time and money. Some companies
have completely disallowed any email message containing an attachment with VB
script or macros.
Microsoft itself automatically disables all macros without any warning in
several of the Office 2000 applications and all of the Office XP applications.
For instance, imagine you’ve just installed Word 2000 and you open a file from
Word 97 that contains a macro you wrote. When you go to use it, you’ll get a
message that all macros have been disabled. Without warning and without the
standard warning message about enabling or disabling macros, Word 2000 has
disabled your macros.
If you write your own macros, they won’t run until you go to Tools >
Macros > Security and change the security level to a more lenient setting.
Also, you can use a file named selfcert.exe to create a ‘digital signature’
for yourself. (Use Explorer/My Computer to search for selfcert.exe). These are
not as secure as the digital signatures from Verisign, but you can be pretty
sure no one is ‘cracking’ your signature on your personal machine. Sign all
of your macros with your digital signature and the first time you’re asked
whether or not you trust yourself, say YES! Now you can run your own macros
without the annoying message telling you that there’s a macro in the file. Of
course, macros from anyone else (including malevolent persons) will be
intercepted and you will have a chance to disable them.
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