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My IT department have disabled the opening of iCal/ics/web calendars in Outlook 2007, citing "Security Risks" as the reason, but I've not found anyone who's willing to let me know what those security risks are.

Is anyone here aware of any reasons why this is so and the possible resolutions?

B.

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2 Answers 2

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Anywhere you allow someone to load data that isn't under their control or their IT department's control, you increase the risk that the data is under an attacker's control. If there's some flaw (known to Microsoft or otherwise) in the way Outlook parses .ics data, it could be used by an attacker who gets a user to open a malicious .ics file.

I'm not saying it's a trade-off that's worth making, just that this is the input that would've gone into the decision.

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  • I guess it's fear of unknown flaws that is the answer. I hadn't considered them.
    – oharab
    Nov 22, 2011 at 20:37
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There's some very old code execution vulnerabilities, but there are patches available for all of them:

http://www.iss.net/threats/249.html

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms07-003

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms07-026

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