I got a Power Point file from my mom that I went to share with someone else, and his reaction was “no way I’m opening a pps file from anyone but my boss”. I ran it and noticed no problems, but his reaction made me think: Are pps files common vectors for bad stuff on computers?
Theoretically, you could embed a virus in one. I don’t know how common it is.
PowerPoint’s not a common vector for viruses, but, being part of Microsoft Office, it is susceptible to some of the macro viruses.
PM97/Vic.A is one of the very few viruses specific to PowerPoint and it’s generally unlikely to do much damage, since it’s hard coded to act in the C:\My Documents folder. Now, most computers are set up as C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents
It’s certainly not anything I’d worry about.
As gotpasswords mentioned, not specifically powerpoint, but Microsoft Office documents in general, most certainly.
Way back when the idea of a data file such as a text document carrying a virus was laughable (along with email viruses, but whatever). Microsoft’s programs nowadays almost always allow the embedding of executable code in their documents, meaning that it is entirely plausible that malicious code could be carried.
At my mom’s office where some PCs are fully available to dozens of random people every day (and network security isn’t that great), they’ll have upwards of thousands of viruses on a machine when it ends up being scanned, at least 90% of which are of the macro type. (These typically infect all your other Word, Excell, etc. documents if you open an infected document, in case you wondered).
I’ll open documents from more than just my boss, but I scan even stuff from him with at least 2 AV products first.
Thanks for the tips. And I did scan it with both AVG and McAffee :), it’s clean.