Developer's Guide to Web Application Security

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A decent hacker can exploit weaknesses in any application after he

is familiar with the language it was created in. Take, for instance, the

Melissa virus or other viruses that affect Microsoft Office applications. A

hacker with a good knowledge of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA),

Visual Basic, or Visual C++ could wreak havoc (as has already been demon-

strated by the Melissa virus) on systems running MS Office. Security here

would serve to at least warn unsuspecting users that the e-mail attachment

they are about to open has macros that are potentially dangerous, and would

offer to disable the macros, thereby rendering the hacker’s code useless. ...