Automation Security to enforce macro level security in Office documents must be configured.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-17741	DTOO193	SV-52730r2_rule		Medium

Description
When a separate program is used to launch Microsoft Office Excel, PowerPoint, or Word programmatically, any macros can run in the programmatically opened application without being blocked. This functionality could allow an attacker to use automation to run malicious code in Excel, PowerPoint, or Word.

STIG	Date
Microsoft Office System 2013 STIG	2017-01-04

Details

Check Text ( C-47058r3_chk )
Verify the policy value for User Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Microsoft Office 2013 >> Security Settings "Automation Security" is set to "Enabled (Use application macro security level)". Use the Windows Registry Editor to navigate to the following hive: HKEY_Users For every users profile hive under HKEY_Users, navigate to the following key: \Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\Common\Security If the value “AutomationSecurity” is REG_DWORD = 2 for all user profile hives, this is not a finding.

Check Text ( C-47058r3_chk )

Verify the policy value for User Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Microsoft Office 2013 >> Security Settings "Automation Security" is set to "Enabled (Use application macro security level)".

Use the Windows Registry Editor to navigate to the following hive:
HKEY_Users

For every users profile hive under HKEY_Users, navigate to the following key:
\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\Common\Security

If the value “AutomationSecurity” is REG_DWORD = 2 for all user profile hives, this is not a finding.

Fix Text (F-45655r1_fix)
Set the policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2013 -> Security Settings "Automation Security" to "Enabled (Use application macro security level)".