OpenOffice.org has been increasing in both popularity and visibility over the past several months. Version 2.0 has added a number of new features to bring it closer to feature parity with Microsoft Office, and it also offers full support for the Open Document format. However, a report just released by the French Ministry of Defense says that it still falls short of Microsoft's office suite in one important area: security.
The classified report follows a one-year study by the Ministry comparing the popular open-source suite to its commercial competitor. During a demonstration for other parts of the French government on July 5, lab director Lt. Col. Eric Filiol showed some off some malevolent code the Ministry had developed in order to discover the weak points of both office suites. The researchers found that OpenOffice.org was more susceptible to certain attacks, including those made via macros.
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