Hacker in on-line help!

[Guest]

Hi,
I've posted this to the Office site too, but they do not seem to be as good
at the technical answers as you guys, and I need an answer to this soon.
Here goes...

Having just reinstalled my damged Norton firewall I was finally able to have
a look in the Office 2003 help sections today, or rather this morining, at
about 0200-0300 hours - I looked via Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. When I
looked at my Event Viewer->Security section, I found for this time span, many
"failed" warnings. This was something I had not had before, so I examined
them and was freaked-out to see that they were all instances of "Change
Password Attempt". Something was going through several guesses at account
names and passwords and trying to get into my computer. The Firewall did
nothing because it was allowing the Office help programs free access.

Was this an unauthorised attack, or is this how Office (or indeed any
Windows program) is supposed to work? And if the former, then what should I
do about it? Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks you in advance.
--
Jess
(XP Home SP/2 OEM. HDD1:Windows NTFS 60GB; Linux 20GB. HDD2:Windows NTFS
40GB. P4 HT.)
[Please note: Display name may be changed in near future - too many people
called Jess on this site.]

 

[Kevin R]

Hi,
I've posted this to the Office site too, but they do not seem to be as
good
at the technical answers as you guys, and I need an answer to this soon.
Here goes...

Having just reinstalled my damged Norton firewall I was finally able to
have
a look in the Office 2003 help sections today, or rather this morining, at
about 0200-0300 hours - I looked via Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. When I
looked at my Event Viewer->Security section, I found for this time span,
many
"failed" warnings. This was something I had not had before, so I examined
them and was freaked-out to see that they were all instances of "Change
Password Attempt". Something was going through several guesses at account
names and passwords and trying to get into my computer. The Firewall did
nothing because it was allowing the Office help programs free access.

Was this an unauthorised attack, or is this how Office (or indeed any
Windows program) is supposed to work? And if the former, then what should
I
do about it? Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks you in advance.
--
Jess
(XP Home SP/2 OEM. HDD1:Windows NTFS 60GB; Linux 20GB. HDD2:Windows NTFS
40GB. P4 HT.)
[Please note: Display name may be changed in near future - too many people
called Jess on this site.]

I know its not an answer but I have installed a router and since this has
been installed not had any blocked intrusions reported by Zonealarm but
before I had the router it used to be 100's every day it gives me so much
more protection than a software fire wall

 

[Guest]

Sounds like good advice, thanks. (Actually, I think all my problems began
with the file corruption I suffered due to Norton/Symantec products.)

Hi,
I've posted this to the Office site too, but they do not seem to be as
good
at the technical answers as you guys, and I need an answer to this soon.
Here goes...

Having just reinstalled my damged Norton firewall I was finally able to
have
a look in the Office 2003 help sections today, or rather this morining, at
about 0200-0300 hours - I looked via Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. When I
looked at my Event Viewer->Security section, I found for this time span,
many
"failed" warnings. This was something I had not had before, so I examined
them and was freaked-out to see that they were all instances of "Change
Password Attempt". Something was going through several guesses at account
names and passwords and trying to get into my computer. The Firewall did
nothing because it was allowing the Office help programs free access.

Was this an unauthorised attack, or is this how Office (or indeed any
Windows program) is supposed to work? And if the former, then what should
I
do about it? Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks you in advance.
--
Jess
(XP Home SP/2 OEM. HDD1:Windows NTFS 60GB; Linux 20GB. HDD2:Windows NTFS
40GB. P4 HT.)
[Please note: Display name may be changed in near future - too many people
called Jess on this site.]

I know its not an answer but I have installed a router and since this has
been installed not had any blocked intrusions reported by Zonealarm but
before I had the router it used to be 100's every day it gives me so much
more protection than a software fire wall