Dragging Unicode eMail messages to file system must be disallowed.

Overview

Finding ID	Version	Rule ID	IA Controls	Severity
V-17812	DTOO231 - Outlook	SV-33512r1_rule	ECSC-1	Medium

Description
When users drag e-mail messages from Outlook to a Windows Explorer window or to their Desktop, Outlook creates a .msg file using the native character encoding format for the configured locale (the so-called "ANSI" format). If this setting is Enabled, Outlook uses the Unicode character encoding standard to create the message file, which preserves special characters in the message. However, Unicode text is vulnerable to homograph attacks, in which characters are replaced by different but similar-looking characters. For example, the Cyrillic letter ? (U+0430) appears identical to the Latin letter a (U+0061) in many typefaces, but is actually a different character. Homographs can be used in "phishing" attacks to convince victims to visit fraudulent Web sites and enter sensitive information.

Description

When users drag e-mail messages from Outlook to a Windows Explorer window or to their Desktop, Outlook creates a .msg file using the native character encoding format for the configured locale (the so-called "ANSI" format). If this setting is Enabled, Outlook uses the Unicode character encoding standard to create the message file, which preserves special characters in the message. However, Unicode text is vulnerable to homograph attacks, in which characters are replaced by different but similar-looking characters. For example, the Cyrillic letter ? (U+0430) appears identical to the Latin letter a (U+0061) in many typefaces, but is actually a different character. Homographs can be used in "phishing" attacks to convince victims to visit fraudulent Web sites and enter sensitive information.

STIG	Date
Microsoft Outlook 2010	2014-01-07

Details

Check Text ( C-33999r1_chk )
The policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Outlook 2010 -> Outlook Options -> Other -> Advanced “Use Unicode format when dragging e-mail message to file system” must be set to “Disabled”. Procedure: Use the Windows Registry Editor to navigate to the following key: HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\14.0\outlook\options\general Criteria: If the value MSGFormat is REG_DWORD = 0, this is not a finding.

Check Text ( C-33999r1_chk )

The policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Outlook 2010 -> Outlook Options -> Other -> Advanced “Use Unicode format when dragging e-mail message to file system” must be set to “Disabled”.

Procedure: Use the Windows Registry Editor to navigate to the following key:

HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\14.0\outlook\options\general

Criteria: If the value MSGFormat is REG_DWORD = 0, this is not a finding.

Fix Text (F-29687r1_fix)
Set the policy value for User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Outlook 2010 -> Outlook Options -> Other -> Advanced “Use Unicode format when dragging e-mail message to file system” to “Disabled”.