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Microsoft Excel 2013 STIG

Rules, Groups, and Values defined within the XCCDF Benchmark

  • DTOO111 - Enable IE Bind to Object

    Group
  • DTOO104 - Disable user name and password

    Group
  • Disabling of user name and password syntax from being used in URLs must be enforced.

    The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) standard allows user authentication to be included in URL strings in the form http://username:password@example.com. A malicious user might use this URL syntax to ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Internet Explorer Bind to Object functionality must be enabled.

    Internet Explorer performs a number of safety checks before initializing an ActiveX control. It will not initialize a control if the kill bit for the control is set in the registry, or if the secur...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • The Saved from URL mark must be selected to enforce Internet zone processing.

    Typically, when Internet Explorer loads a web page from a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) share that contains a Mark of the Web (MOTW) comment, indicating the page was saved from a site on the In...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Navigation to URLs embedded in Office products must be blocked.

    To protect users from attacks, Internet Explorer usually does not attempt to load malformed URLs. This functionality can be controlled separately for instances of Internet Explorer spawned by Offic...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Links that invoke instances of Internet Explorer from within an Office product must be blocked.

    The "Pop-up Blocker" feature in Internet Explorer can be used to block most unwanted pop-up and pop-under windows from appearing. This functionality can be controlled separately for instances of In...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Trust Bar Notifications for unsigned application add-ins must be blocked.

    If an application is configured to require all add-ins to be signed by a trusted publisher, any unsigned add-ins the application loads will be disabled and the application will display the Trust Ba...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • All automatic loading from trusted locations must be disabled.

    Trusted locations specified in the Trust Center are used to define file locations assumed to be safe. Content, code, and add-ins are allowed to load from trusted locations with a minimal amount of ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • The scanning of encrypted macros in open XML documents must be enforced.

    When an Office Open XML document (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) is rights-managed, or password-protected, any macros embedded in the document are encrypted along with the rest of the contents. By d...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Disallowance of trusted locations on the network must be enforced.

    Files located in trusted locations and specified in the Trust Center are typically assumed to be safe. Content, code, and add-ins are allowed to load from trusted locations with minimal security an...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • The Save commands default file format must be configured.

    When users create new Excel files, Excel 2013 saves them in the new *.xlsx format. Ensure this setting is enabled to specify all new files are created in Excel 2013. If a new file is created in an ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Trust access for VBA must be disallowed.

    VSTO projects require access to the Visual Basic for Applications project system in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, even though the projects do not use Visual Basic for Applications. Design-time suppo...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Warning Bar settings for VBA macros must be configured.

    When users open files containing VBA macros, applications open the files with the macros disabled and displays the Trust Bar with a warning that macros are present and have been disabled. Users may...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Automatic republish to web pages must be disallowed.

    If users choose to publish Excel data to a static web page and enable the AutoRepublish feature, Excel saves a copy of the data to the web page every time the user saves the workbook. If the page i...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • The AutoRepublish warning alert must be provided.

    AutoRepublish is a feature in Excel allowing workbooks to be automatically republished to the World Wide Web each time the workbook is saved. A number of changes might need to be made to allow the ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Macro storage must be in personal macro workbooks.

    The Record Macro dialog box includes a drop-down menu allowing users to choose whether to store the new macro in the current workbook, a new workbook, or their personal macro workbook (Personal.xls...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • ActiveX Installs must be configured for proper restriction.

    Microsoft ActiveX controls allow unmanaged, unprotected code to run on the user computers. ActiveX controls do not run within a protected container in the browser like the other types of HTML or Mi...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Configuration for file validation must be enforced.

    Office File Validation helps detect and prevent a kind of exploit known as a file format attack or file fuzzing attack. File format attacks exploit the integrity of a file. They occur when someone ...
    Rule Medium Severity
  • Open/Save actions for dBase III / IV files must be blocked.

    This setting specifies whether users can open, view, edit, or save files saved in the specified format. Enabling block of the specified format mitigates zero-day security attacks (which are attacks...
    Rule Medium Severity

The content of the drawer really is up to you. It could have form fields, definition lists, text lists, labels, charts, progress bars, etc. Spacing recommendation is 24px margins. You can put tabs in here, and can also make the drawer scrollable.

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