Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Hi all, first time posting here so please be gentle. I have used OpenOffice a number of times in the past and have always enjoyed the ease of using this programme and having decided to reinstall this software yesterday I have hit some major concerns. I use Acronis Cyber Protect to back up my computer and if any of you use this software yourself you will know it also includes a vulnerability scanner.

Today when starting my computer I received a warning alerting me to a number of found vulnerabilities within OpenOffice, see list below. I clicked on the information bubble next to the first vulnerability which took me to this link:

https://www.openoffice.org/security/cve ... 37401.html,

Now according to this information the vulnerability has been fixed with the release of version 4.1.13 and yet I am still receiving these alerts running version 4.1.14 Have these vulnerabilities really been fixed? If so why am I still receiving warnings? I'm so concerned about this that I'm about to uninstall OpenOffice again but I'd rather not if it's not necessary. Any thoughts?

Edit: Changed subject, was Apache OpenOffice 1.4.14 Detected Vulnerabilities  Make your post understandable by others  -- MrProgrammer, forum moderator

Hi and welcome to the forum!

First report of that in the forum AFAIK.
Likely your security application that is not up to date.

Try LibreOffice, it is under much more active development, you may experience less of those issues. See [Tutorial] Considering a Switch from OpenOffice to LibreOffice? Some Useful Information.

Please add [Solved] at the beginning of the title in your first post (top of the topic) with the 🖉 button if your issue has been fixed.

@Hagar Deiest, thank you for your response. Strangely I cannot see the image I uploaded, there were around 15 or so vulnerabilities discovered. That said, I'm happy to switch to LibreOffice if it solves the problem. Does it support the same '.odt' file format?

Incidentally, I am running the latest up-to-date vulnerability scanner in Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office so perhaps a false positive?!

Sure, LO and AOO share the same file format (ODF). LO even supports the latest version (1.3), which is not the case of AOO.

And yes, certainly a false positive.

Thanks for that, Windows Defender didn't find any issues so false positive perhaps I'm no expert. So out of interest could you see the image I uploaded to my OneDrive, linked in first post?

Not possible before 12 hours at least for me, currently behind a corporate firewall. Else, crop the pic and upload it here (it has to be less than 128KBi).

The image is not linked or embedded in the first post.

@David, thanks for confirming that to me. I uploaded the image to my OneDrive and provided a link as the editor would not allow me to simply upload the image here, (my bad, I'm not familiar with the workings of this editor).

@Hagar Delest your previous comments seem somewhat premature, no offence! Without having seen my image how on earth could you say with any confidence that it's likely my vulnerability scanner which is out of date, or that no other mentions of these detections have been reported. Clearly without seeing my image nobody can see what vulnerabilities I'm reporting That said however I did appreciate the advice to ditch Open Office in favour of Libra Office.

So now that I figured out how to upload the image here it is. As I said in my first post the first vulnerability is reported in the Apache OpenOffice link.

MKSlinky wrote: ↑Tue Jul 25, 2023 2:06 pm Without having seen my image how on earth could you say with any confidence that it's likely my vulnerability scanner which is out of date...

Over time there have been multiple reports in this forum from people with the same kinds of issues you are reporting. More often than not it turns out that the virus scanner is the issue and not OpenOffice. However, it is also the case that many people solve the issue by just switching to LibreOffice. Even despite the issue that you are having there are several good reasons to switch to LibreOffice anyway — read the tutorial that Hagar pointed you towards.

You might also want to read this thread: [Solved] Acronis anti-virus blocks OpenOffice. You could also search this forum for other 'virus' related threads.

You might, if you want to nurse 'the problem', try having your 'malware files' scanned by/at VirusTotal.

@LastUnicorn, thanks for the link about Acronis, I will read that with interest a little later. Yes I did read the article that Hagar pointed me towards, it has helped me make the decision to switch to LibreOffice. Hopefully I will get the time to do that tomorrow. I don't doubt for one minute that my issues might be false positives but such reports always raise concern as they should. That said however I don't suppose it's worth me worrying now if I'm switching to LO. Thanks anyway

MKSlinky wrote: ↑Tue Jul 25, 2023 2:06 pm @Hagar Delest your previous comments seem somewhat premature, no offence! Without having seen my image how on earth could you say with any confidence that it's likely my vulnerability scanner which is out of date, or that no other mentions of these detections have been reported. Clearly without seeing my image nobody can see what vulnerabilities I'm reporting

AOO 4.1.14 has been released for 5 months now and if vulnerabilities had been found, they would have been reported a long time ago.

Perhaps, yes but not something I need to worry about now, if LibreOffice works out I shall consider this topic solved. Thanks for recommending that to me.