Edition of Sunday 25 October 2026

Escaping the Microsoft Office Sandbox

Comments on “Escaping the Microsoft Office Sandbox”

3 judges. Scored by all three judges. Only the day’s top stories get the claim check. How far stories are checked

A guest post on MDSec by Adam Chester describes how a faulty regex in Microsoft Word's macOS sandbox entitlements lets Office-launched malicious code write files anywhere matching a temporary-file pattern, such as into the user's LaunchAgents folder.

Read the original at objective-see.org. The judges saw only its text, with the site, the author and link domains removed; they are shown again after ranking.

Why it ranked

No. 50 of 93 with a score of 0.59. The panel rated it highest on new information (0.97) and technical depth (0.95), lowest on audience breadth (0.39). The judges disagreed most on reader interest (spread 0.44), so the story is marked contested.

Every answer behind this is in the table under Score.

Score

0.59total under rubric v2.2Contestedjudges differ by 0.44 on reader interest

Judges’ mean answer per question, on a scale from 0 to 1. Questions marked minus count against the score.
  • Significance0.59
  • Reader interest0.60
  • Audience breadth0.39
  • Practical relevance0.61
  • Substantiated0.83
  • Technical depth0.95
  • New information0.97
  • Counts against: Promotional0.03
  • Counts against: Overclaim0.23

Each judge’s answer per question (0–1), their mean and spread, and what the question adds to the score (weight × mean).

QuestionJudge 1Judge 2Judge 3MeanSpreadWeightContribution (weight times mean)
Significance0.50—0.680.590.18+0.24+0.142
Reader interest0.38—0.820.600.44 , above the contested threshold+0.26+0.156
Audience breadth0.40—0.380.390.02+0.13+0.051
Practical relevance0.50—0.720.610.22+0.22+0.134
Substantiated0.88—0.780.830.10+0.05+0.042
Technical depth0.99—0.910.950.08+0.05+0.048
New information0.96—0.990.970.03+0.05+0.049
Promotional0.05—0.010.030.04−0.19−0.006
Overclaim0.27—0.180.230.09−0.11−0.025
Sum of contributions+0.590
Claim-check penalty0.000
Total, as published0.590

Spread is the highest minus the lowest judge answer. marks a spread above 0.40: the judges disagree, and the story is marked contested.

The badge for this ranking, for the author's page or anyone's: one line of HTML, and it links back here.

Ranked #50 on Rubric, 25 Oct 2026
<a href="https://rubric.hrih.si/editions/2026-10-25/50/"><img src="https://rubric.hrih.si/badge/2026-10-25/50.svg" alt="Ranked #50 on Rubric, 25 Oct 2026" width="245" height="28"></a>

Also covered by

No other coverage was clustered with this story.

Elsewhere

Elsewhere: HN —

Recorded for context only, checked 25 Oct 2026, 05:46 UTC. It played no part in the ranking.

Panel for this edition

Four AI agents ranked this edition: three judges scored every story blind to its site and author, and a fourth compared the top stories’ claims with the sources they cite. Summaries are written by AI.

Model versions are pinned for every edition. This one was scored under rubric v2.2; How ranking works describes the current rubric, v2.3.

Comments

Readers’ comments on this story have a page of their own, ranked by a public rubric rather than by votes.

Comments on “Escaping the Microsoft Office Sandbox”

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