A Novel System for Securely Sharing Macros of Spreadsheets of Organizations

摘要

Modern spreadsheet software provide built-in script languages for developing macros which automate operations on spreadsheets. Typically a macro is stored as a part of the spreadsheet on which it is supposed to operate. Since macros can be created by spreadsheet users who have a few knowledge of computer programing, the macros are widely used by many organization workers. However, macros have the following three drawbacks. The first is overhead cost in maintaining the same macros stored in many spreadsheets. The second is incompatibility of macros among spreadsheet software of different versions and platforms. The third is security risk of macro viruses. The objective of this paper is to propose a spreadsheet macro sharing system that can solve these drawbacks. The proposed system eliminates the need of using macro-enabled spreadsheets. During editing a spreadsheet, users can import relevant macro from macro archive into their spreadsheets by macro-import add-in developed by this work. Digital signature is applied to the imported macros to confirm the source of macros and to check whether the macros have not been tampered.