21st Century Learning and Teaching

Poisoned RTF files can give hackers full control of your machine - even if you only preview the document in Outlook.

Attackers are actively exploiting a newly discovered Microsoft Word vulnerability that could be used to gain remote access of your PC, Microsoft warned Monday—and even worse, the exploit can be triggered by opening or merely previewing a malicious email using Outlook's default settings.

The attack is delivered using booby-trapped Rich Text (RTF) files. Accessing or previewing a poisoned file with Word grants the attacker the same rights as the current user.

Making matters worse, Word is the default document viewer in Outlook 2007, 2010, and 2013.