Dear users,

Microsoft has confirmed so called “zero-day” attacks using an unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft Excel 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, Excel 2002, Excel 2000, Microsoft Excel 2004 for Mac, and Microsoft Excel v. X for Mac. Opening a malicious crafted excel-file gives an attacker the possibility to execute his code on your computer. These attacks are currently mostly carried out by sending emails with those malicious attachments.
Advice of the Basel University Computing Centre: please be very carefully with opening excel-files, especially those received by email. If you are using outlook you are at a higher risk as outlook opens excel attachments automatically - check the microsoft advisory how to disable this function until your excel is patched. A patch might be released in several days.