An Effective Security Model for Removing Distrustful Macros from Office Documents

Macros of Microsoft Office documents are used in many organizations to improve efficiency of operations on the office documents. However, when created with malicious intentions, macros contain viruses that steal sensitive information of users or cause damage to files and systems of users. Although antivirus programs can remove the office documents containing macro viruses from users’ systems, it can’t detect new viruses that are not registered in its virus definition databases. Although users pay attention not to activate macros of the office documents come from unknown senders, macro virus creators have successfully used social engineering techniques that lead users of Microsoft office to run the infected macros. Therefore, viruses in macros of the office documents are still dangerous threats for the organizations. The objective of this paper is to propose an effective security model that solves this problem. This proposed model employs digital signature technology for examining trusted macro creators and detecting uncertified modification of macros of Microsoft Office documents. Keywords— Documents; macro; virus; XML; digital signature; certificates