Hackers attack Microsoft Office Access with an oddball tactic

If you haven’t double-checked that your employees’ installations of Internet Explorer, Outlook and

Outlook Express are blocking files with a .MDB extension, time to make sure. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team is warning users about an attack involving Microsoft Access Database (MDB) files. It is odd that hackers have been using MDB files to launch an attack. Most browsers and client e-mail applications block MDB files by default, and yet this attack seems to have been successful enough to make it onto the US-CERT ‘s radar, reports a story from the IDG News Service.

A flaw in the Microsoft Office Access database allows hackers to use these files to install malware, said US-CERT. Criminals execute the attack by sending specially crafted Microsoft Access Database (MDB) files to victims.