Why SMG scan caught certain URL in Excel (as an attachment) even though there is no URL found in the spreadsheet itself

Products

• Messaging Gateway

Issue/Introduction

SMG scanned an email with Excel as its attachment, which resulted in Unknown URL verdict. However, there was no URL present in the mail nor in the spreadsheet (Excel).

Cause

Excel’s automatic hyperlink feature interpreted a home address as a hyperlink. For instance, Excel interpreted a home address ‘H.No 111 Sample Drive Anytown SomeCountry’ to be ‘http://h.no/’.

Resolution

The issue is not with SMG. It works as expected when it scans the attachment for any URL as per normal process, which in this case, found the hyperlink provided by Excel.