Text in Outlook that represents internet and network paths must not be automatically turned into hyperlinks.

Severity	Group ID	Group Title	Version	Rule ID	Date	STIG Version
medium	V-251872	SRG-APP-000516	DTOO425	SV-251872r812968_rule	2022-03-11	2

Description
The ability of Outlook to automatically turn text that represents internet and network paths into hyperlinks would allow users to click on those hyperlinks in an email message and access malicious or otherwise harmful websites.

ℹ️ Check
Verify the policy value for User Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Microsoft Outlook 2016 >> Outlook Options >> "Internet and network path into hyperlinks" is set to "Disabled". Procedure: Use the Windows Registry Editor to navigate to the following key: HKCU\software\policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\outlook\options\autoformat Criteria: If the value pgrfafo_25_1 is REG_DWORD = 0, this is not a finding.

ℹ️ Check

Verify the policy value for User Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Microsoft Outlook 2016 >> Outlook Options >> "Internet and network path into hyperlinks" is set to "Disabled". Procedure: Use the Windows Registry Editor to navigate to the following key: HKCU\software\policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\outlook\options\autoformat Criteria: If the value pgrfafo_25_1 is REG_DWORD = 0, this is not a finding.

✔️ Fix
Set the policy User Configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Microsoft Outlook 2016 >> Outlook Options >> "Internet and network path into hyperlinks" must be set to "Disabled".