Symbols are pieces of information used during debugging, and are contained within Symbol files, which are created by the compiler during application build.

Some of these symbols are called ‘public symbols’. They contain basic information, such as function names and global variables, and are used in all forms of debugging. Symbol files that contain only public symbols are called ‘stripped symbol files’.

Starting August 9, Microsoft Office is publishing stripped symbol files via the Microsoft Public Symbol Server, to provide security researchers with additional information when hunting for bugs in Office products, and to help them create more detailed reports.