Macro Viruses
Viruses which have been programmed in what are called macro-languages. Popular Office programs likes Microsoft Excel or Word, for example, permit you to program macros, and thus macro-viruses as well, which are mostly disseminated by email together with the documents involved. These documents should always be subjected to a virus scan before being opened. Additional protection against new macro-viruses can be obtained by opening such documents on test machines and switching off macros. Though more recent versions of the programs often feature a query function, requiring you to confirm before a macro is executed, questions like this are often clicked away hastily, and what’s more, attacks have already occurred which were able to evade these queries.
