Microsoft Outlook 2013 STIG
Rules, Groups, and Values defined within the XCCDF Benchmark
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DTOO104 - Disable user name and password
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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 -
Access restriction settings for published calendars must be configured.
Users can share their calendars with others by publishing them to the Microsoft Office Online Calendar Sharing Services and to a server that supports the World Wide Web Distributed Authoring and Ve...Rule Medium Severity -
IE Trusted Zones assumed trusted must be blocked.
Malicious users can send HTML email messages with embedded Web beacons, which are pictures and other content from external servers that can be used to track whether specific recipients open the mes...Rule Medium Severity -
The Add-In Trust Level must be configured.
Under normal circumstances the installed COM add-ins are applications that have been approved and intentionally deployed by the organization and therefore they should not pose a security threat. H...Rule Medium Severity -
Object Model Prompt behavior for programmatic access of user address data must be configured.
If an untrusted application accesses the recipient fields, the application could gain access to sensitive data and potentially change that data. This could result in mail being sent to the wrong pa...Rule Medium Severity -
Trusted add-ins behavior for email must be configured.
The Outlook object model includes entry points to access Outlook data, save data to specified locations, and send email messages, all of which can be used by malicious application developers. To he...Rule Medium Severity -
The prompt to display level 1 attachments must be disallowed when closing an item.
To protect users from viruses and other harmful files, Outlook uses two levels of security, designated Level 1 and Level 2, to restrict access to files attached to email messages or other items. Po...Rule Medium Severity -
Junk Mail UI must be configured.
The Junk E-mail Filter in Outlook is designed to intercept the most obvious junk email, or spam, and send it to users' Junk E-mail folders. The filter evaluates each incoming message based on sever...Rule Medium Severity -
External content and pictures in HTML email must be displayed.
Malicious email senders can send HTML email messages with embedded Web beacons, which are pictures and other content from external servers that can be used to track whether specific recipients open...Rule Medium Severity -
Internet calendar integration in Outlook must be disabled.
The Internet Calendar feature in Outlook enables users to publish calendars online (using the webcal:// protocol) and subscribe to calendars that others have published. When users subscribe to an I...Rule Medium Severity -
Attachments using generated name for secure temporary folders must be configured.
The Secure Temporary Files folder is used to store attachments when they are opened in email. By default, Outlook generates a random name for the Secure Temporary Files folder and saves it in the T...Rule Medium Severity -
Outlook must be enforced as the default email, calendar, and contacts program.
Outlook is made the default program for email, contacts, and calendar services when it is installed, although users can designate other programs as the default programs for these services. If anoth...Rule Medium Severity -
Plain Text Options for outbound email must be configured.
If outgoing mail is formatted in certain ways, for example, if attachments are encoded in UUENCODE format, attackers might manipulate the messages for their own purposes. If UUENCODE formatting is ...Rule Medium Severity -
Publishing to a Web Distributed and Authoring (DAV) server must be prevented.
Outlook users can share their calendars with others by publishing them to a server that supports the World Wide Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol. Unlike the Microsoft Offi...Rule Medium Severity -
Level 1 file extensions must be blocked and not removed.
Malicious code is often spread through e-mail. Some viruses have the ability to send copies of themselves to other people in the victim's Address Book or Contacts list, and such potentially harmful...Rule Medium Severity -
Level 2 file extensions must be blocked and not removed.
Malicious code is often spread through email. Some viruses have the ability to send copies of themselves to other people in the victim's Address Book or Contacts list, and such potentially harmful ...Rule Medium Severity -
Level of calendar details that a user can publish must be restricted.
Outlook users can share their calendars with selected others by publishing them to the Microsoft Office Outlook Calendar Sharing Service. Users can choose from three levels of detail: * Availabilit...Rule Medium Severity -
Run in FIPS compliant mode must be enforced.
Outlook can run in a mode that complies with Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS), a set of standards published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for use by no...Rule Medium Severity -
S/Mime interoperability with external clients for message handling must be configured.
In some situations, administrators might wish to use an external program, such as an add-in, to handle S/MIME message decryption. If your organization works with encrypted messages that the decrypt...Rule Medium Severity -
RSS feed synchronization with Common Feed List must be disallowed.
The Common Feed list is a hierarchical set of RSS feeds to which clients such as Outlook 2013, the Feeds list in Internet Explorer, and the Feed Headlines Sidebar gadget in Windows Vista can subscr...Rule Medium Severity -
Add-on Management functionality must be allowed.
Internet Explorer add-ons are pieces of code, run in Internet Explorer, to provide additional functionality. Rogue add-ons may contain viruses or other malicious code. Disabling or not configuring ...Rule Medium Severity -
File Downloads must be configured for proper restrictions.
Disabling this setting allows websites to present file download prompts via code without the user specifically initiating the download. User preferences may also allow the download to occur withou...Rule Medium Severity -
Outlook Rich Text options must be set for converting to plain text format.
Outlook automatically converts RTF formatted messages that are sent over the Internet to HTML format, so that the message formatting is maintained and attachments are received. This setting control...Rule Medium Severity -
Outlook minimum encryption key length settings must be set.
This setting allows the minimum key length for an encrypted email message to be configured.Rule Medium Severity -
DTOO111 - Enable IE Bind to Object
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The 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 -
DTOO117 - Saved from URL
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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 -
DTOO123-Block Navigation to URL from Office
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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 -
DTOO129 - Block Pop-Ups
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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 Inte...Rule Medium Severity -
DTOO272 - Content download from safe zones
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Permit download of content from safe zones must be configured.
By default, Outlook automatically downloads content from sites that are considered "safe," as defined in the Security tab of the Internet Options dialog box in Internet Explorer. This configuration...Rule Medium Severity -
DTOO219 - Access to Published Calendars
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DTOO224 - Email Recipient to Safe Sender List
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Recipients of sent email must be unable to be added to the safe senders list.
Users could send email messages to request that they be taken off a mailing list. If the email recipient is then automatically added to the Safe Senders List, future e mail messages from that addre...Rule Medium Severity -
DTOO234 - Active X One-Off Forms
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ActiveX One-Off forms must be configured.
Third-party ActiveX controls are not allowed to run in one-off forms in Outlook. This behavior can be changed so that Safe Controls (Microsoft Forms 2.0 controls and the Outlook Recipient and Body ...Rule Medium Severity -
DTOO246 - Scripts in One-Off Forms
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Scripts in One-Off Outlook forms must be disallowed.
Malicious code can be included within Outlook forms, and such code could be executed when users open the form. By default, Outlook does not run scripts in forms in which the script and the layout ...Rule Medium Severity -
DTOO273 - Block Trusted Zones
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DTOO236 - Add-In Trust Level
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DTOO250 - Object Model Prompt for Address Book
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Object Model Prompt behavior for programmatic address books must be configured.
If an untrusted application accesses the address book, the application could gain access to sensitive data and potentially change that data. By default, when an untrusted application attempts to ac...Rule Medium Severity -
DTOO241 - Demote Attachments to Level 2
Group -
Action to demote an EMail Level 1 attachment to Level 2 must be configured.
Outlook uses two levels of security to restrict access to files attached to email messages or other items. Files with specific extensions can be categorized as Level 1 (users cannot view the file) ...Rule Medium Severity -
DTOO254 - Object Model Prompt for Formula Property
Group -
Object Model Prompt behavior for accessing User Property Formula must be configured.
A custom form in Outlook could be used to gain access to sensitive address book data and potentially to change that data. By default, when a user tries to bind an address information field to a com...Rule Medium Severity
Node 2
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.