MS Office Pro Plus 2021 - On Word Launch, Word app immediately shuts down

[James523]

Hello,

I need to use MS Office Pro Plus 2021 (Word), and each time I launch Word, after a few seconds Word immediately shuts down without any explanation. At the same time I receive a Malwarebytes Exploit block popup, informing me an Exploit payload process has been blocked. When I view Malwarebytes popup report (which I have attached to this post) the report says "No malicious items detected) and shows the filename path as: "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\vfs\ProgramFilesCommonX64\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE16\ai.exe F812A913-A807-4FF9-BBD1-57EB9F271369 A3BF620E-E8E4-47AC-A478-E828F70C85A7 16152 C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\WINWORD.EXE". 

My question is, is this an false positive, given no actual malicious items were detected; if so can I safely add this filename path to  "Allow List" on Malwarebytes to resolve Word from immediately shutting down on launch. If not, is this an exploit and if so, what can I do to resolve please.

Many thanks,

Louis 

Winword.txt

[Porthos]

Can you turn off "Penetration Testing" toggle. You should find it in the Advanced settings.

Click on Advanced settings->Turn off Penetration testing toggle and restart Word

Please let us know if that resolved the issue. Thanks.

•  

[James523]

Hi Porthos,

Thanks for your swift reply, and your solution of " turn off  Penetration Testing toggle" did the trick :)

I shall remember this for future reference.

Kind Regards,

Louis

Edited June 8, 2023 by AdvancedSetup
Corrected font issue

[Porthos]

2 hours ago, James523 said:

I shall remember this for future reference.

The best thing to remember is not to change any defualt settings in the Malwarebytes program.