Word 97: Security Breach with Word Temp Files and NTFS Permissions

Temp files created by Word on an NTFS partition during large Copy and Paste operations do not inherit security attributes from the associated document.

Word does not copy the NTFS file permissions of a document file to the .tmp file that is created when large blocks of text are copied from the document. The temp file inherits security from the permissions set on the current directory rather than the original document file. The .tmp file, which may contain readable text from the original file, can easily be opened and read by anyone.

To resolve the problem described in this article, obtain and install the latest Microsoft Word 97 update from the following Microsoft Web site: IMPORTANT NOTE: Microsoft Word 97 post-service release fixes are cumulative. The latest update contains all of the fixes since Service Release 2. If you install the latest update for Word 97, you do not need to install any other updates after Service Release 2.

For additional information about the fixes included in the latest update for Word 97, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.