JavaScript equations coming to Excel. What on earth are they thinking?

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I was going to let this one fly by, but I just can’t. If you’re in the Office Insider program, you can now use custom functions in Excel that are writ
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Elly, wdburt1, Cascadian, Norio

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When I often say I don’t want a constant flux of new features that I need to review to make sure I really don’t want to disable them because I can’t trust Microsoft judgment of what default settings and new features I should have…

There’s always someone to have a bad great idea somewhere that someone should veto. Please, I don’t want to be excited by new features, I just want to continue using my working computer without fear of your updates.

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Elly, wdburt1, HiFlyer, GoneToPlaid, ryegrass, Pepsiboy, Cybertooth, dononline, Noel Carboni

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Doesn’t Excel already provide VBScript, and isn’t that Turing complete? What prevents that from being used to mine crypto? Couldn’t they just convert from JScript to VBScript?

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As Lawrence Abrams at BleepingComputer notes, “within hours” a security researcher, Chase Dardaman, figured out a way to put the CoinHive in-browser JavaScript miner inside a spreadsheet.

Ah, come on!

Surely Microsoft and the most secure OS ever (!) easily handles such minute and trivial details…

Sigh.

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HiFlyer

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You know what has always bothered me is that it seems that the only web sites still requiring java are web sites that should have the highest level of security possible. This includes corporate banking sites (not consumer), online trading programs, HR portals to name a few. Crazy is the new norm in everything it seems.

Red Ruffnsore

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Elly, HiFlyer

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Mr. Natural wrote:

You know what has always bothered me is that it seems that the only web sites still requiring java are web sites that should have the highest level of security possible.

My bank does require Java for certain functions, and then it yells at me for using an “unsupported” browser, which I have to use if I am going to use 32-bit Java in the first place.

I’ve tried to use Waterfox (which still allows Java, but is exclusively 64-bit), but the applet won’t run.  It fails with a warning that I need to use a 32-bit browser!  And if that was not bad enough, I have to run the Java applet in Windows; it does not work in Linux natively.

What I’ve done is to set up a VM containing a 32-bit Firefox ESR installation with the Java plugin with its own dedicated profile.  That Firefox is only allowed to visit the IP(s) associated with the bank… it (the browser and the VM) gets closed immediately after doing whatever the banking thing was, and remains dormant until the next banking thing.

 

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HiFlyer

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I had this issue too – Java app to scan checks for e-deposit. Initially I thought it was because they didn’t want to confuse anybody with 32-bit versus 64-bit Java, so I set the user agent sent to pretend to be 32-bit. However the Java app doesn’t work with 64-bit Java.

This is messed-up for many reasons:
Java apps were supposed to be able to run on anything, but don’t necessarily (libraries)
Chrome hasn’t supported NPAPI for quite awhile
Mozilla blocked all NPAPI plug-ins except for Flash (except for the current ESR version – until it reaches EOL)
Mozilla (like Google) moved those on a 64-bit OS to 64-bit browser about a year ago

I use 64-bit Pale Moon, although I did have to install a copy of the 32-bit version for this reason.

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Javascript ain’t Java.

If we banned everything that’s been abused or is capable of being abused, we’d all be sitting stark naked, on bare earth, in the dark. 🙂

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

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hitokage, Microfix, HiFlyer, EH, OscarCP

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I can bash your head against the bare earth.  I still found a way to deliver abuse in spite of all thoughts contrary.

I should go work for Microsoft.

Fortran, C++, R, Python, Java, Matlab, HTML, CSS, etc.... coding is fun!
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Cybertooth

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Anything that can be touted as innovation will be used to convince users that they should continue paying for feature bloat.  Its all consistent with the fact that Microsoft has it’s head in the Cloud(s).

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HiFlyer, GoneToPlaid, AlexEiffel

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And that may be exactly why Microsoft wants to back Javascript into Excel — to allow hidden “edge computing” on all of your computers.

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wdburt1, HiFlyer

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Woody, were you imagining that Microsoft doesn’t want vulnerabilities in their software?

How on Earth would they lock people into their update ecosystem if they didn’t introduce new vulnerabilities?

-Noel

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SueW, HiFlyer, GoneToPlaid, Cascadian

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Sort of like installing a expensive alarm system in a car, then leaving the keys in the ignition.

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Microfix, HiFlyer, GoneToPlaid

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That is a mighty fine analogy.

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HiFlyer

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I’m still on Office 2010.  Will this affect my version of Excel?  If so, please let me know which update this is so I can hide it.

Thanks in advance for your informing me of the “update. ”

 

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SueW, HiFlyer

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From my read of the article and the comments and questions, the author says MS is not go9ng to support Office 2013. So I will guess that leaves Office 2010 alone also. Not sure from the article whether it will be a standard package or if it will remain opt-in or by adding a feature. THe article said it will be able to be disabled.

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Lori, SueW, Elly, HiFlyer

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Bill C. wrote:

…that leaves Office 2010 alone…

Hallelujah! As they say, “That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.”

-Noel

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SueW, Elly, HiFlyer

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You’re not making the things we *really* want, Microsoft. How about making a secure and STABLE operating system that doesn’t silently install updates against my will in the background and then rudely interrupt me when I’m trying to do work to install a computer-bricking update?

It’s a good thing I use Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides now. The only reason why I have Office 365 on this computer is because my school offered it to me for free (well as part of my tuition… perks of being a student!).

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wdburt1, HiFlyer

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Hey Microsoft — Just because something can be done doesn’t mean its a Good Idea!

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HiFlyer

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Well, LibreOffice and OpenOffice can do JavaScript, though I’m sure it’s locked down tighter than anything MS would implement, just because – it’s MS. Another attack vector? Sure, why not! o.O

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HiFlyer, Cybertooth, AlexEiffel

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One of the reasons why I still use Microsoft Works 9 (I have the source CD still with the plastic box it came in, too).  And yes it installs on and works with Windows 10 version 1709. Microsoft just gives me Office 2007 suite SP3 updates to make it run correctly. All I use it for is the spreadsheets.

 

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I still use MS Works 4.5a for some stuff — simply because it is so quick and convenient for initial spreadsheet and doc creations. And it actually calculates results correctly within spreadsheets.

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HiFlyer

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Wordpad is a great word processor for most documents. And it is free and comes with Windows, including Windows 10.

Interestingly, if you click About from within Wordpad, it tells you that the program name is “Windows 10”. In other words, Microsoft treats it like it is part of Windows. The same thing happens if you click Help / About from within Notepad – it tells you that it is “Windows 10”.

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columbia2011

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Three questions, because this is not entirely clear to me:

(1) Is this an issue with all versions of Excel, from Office 2003 on?

(2) Is this only an issue if one installs some new addons on E 11 and if so, which ones in particular?

(3) Is this an issue in one installs a new Windows 7 patch and, if so, which one?

My thanks, in advance, to any one that answers them.

 

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

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HiFlyer

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Why not use Python or Ruby which are both much better designed languages than JavaScript. JS has to be one of the most incompetently designed programming language released in the last 25 years in general use. But incompetence is nothing new with MS.

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HiFlyer

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Think QBASIC, if you want to know about an incompetently-designed programming language. For decades it seemed, QBASIC was the default programming language distributed by Microsoft and used by many.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Edgar Dysktra commented on the original BASIC that anyone who learned “programming” on BASIC was a lost cause. I never had the misfortune to use QBASIC but have had to deal with the imbecilities of IdiotScript.

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You could define variables on the fly. Misspell a variable name, and you’ve got yourself a new variable! Only way to prevent that was to declare “Option Explicit”. Microsoft should have made Option Explicit the default, and made the programmer specifically declare “Option Implicit” (or whatever it is called) if they wanted to have things the old way.

Also, QBASIC defaulted to a two-digit year as we were getting within a few years of Y2K, even though Y2K was a big concern at that time. Microsoft should have changed the default to a four-digit year. This wouldn’t have affected anything except for new code, and it would have been an easy fix.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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This is going off topic by a wide margin…

QBASIC came with DOS version 5.0 in 1991, hard to believe that was 27 years ago.

I’ve seen some folks’ works that did neat things using QBASIC but could have used some (or more) formal teaching about programming properly. It was good to have it included with DOS for people who didn’t know about C, Pascal or other languages allowing folks to express themselves.

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A long time ago I used Qbasic all the time….to play gorilla.bas of course!

Red Ruffnsore

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I think it’s evidence of Microsoft’s bigger problem that a new feature can be, and is, met with the assumption that the new feature is unsafe. (and it doesn’t help that the assumption is apparently correct.)

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Elly, HiFlyer

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Isn’t coming to my Office 2007 :).

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Cybertooth

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