5.1.21 Set 'Scripted Window Security Restrictions: outlook.exe' to 'Enabled:True'

Information

Forces pop-up windows to remain in the viewable desktop area, display a status bar, and not draw their borders outside the viewable area of the screen. Ensures that browser windows cannot overlay important information in their parent windows, or in system dialogs. This Internet Explorer feature control setting mitigates threats that can occur when an application programmatically uses Internet Explorer functionality. The recommended state for this setting is: Enabled:True.

Rationale:
Malicious websites often try to confuse or trick users into giving a site permission to perform an action that allows the site to take control of the users' computers in some manner. Disabling or not configuring this setting allows unknown websites to:
- Create browser windows that appear to be from the local operating system.
- Draw active windows that display outside of the viewable areas of the screen that can capture keyboard input.
- Overlay parent windows with their own browser windows to hide important system information, choices, or prompts.

Solution

To implement the recommended configuration state, set the following Group Policy setting
to Enabled.

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Microsoft Office 2010
(Machine)\Security Settings\IE Security\Scripted Window Security Restrictions\Scripted
Window Security Restrictions

Then set the Scripted Window Security Restrictions- outlook.exe option to True.

Impact-It is unlikely that any valid applications would use such deceptive methods to accomplish a
task. For this reason, it is unlikely that organization may encounter any major limitations
due to using this setting.

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/files/530

Item Details

Category: CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

References: 800-53|CM-6b., CSCv6|3.1

Plugin: Windows

Control ID: 124e8da71a182718085122c24beaff2ad9ff9f35cecdc6090f7d6999f23964e8