Threat Center Security News Microsoft fixes PowerPoint flaws
Microsoft fixes PowerPoint flaws Print E-mail
Written by Rebecca Mints   
Thursday, 14 May 2009 01:32
This month’s patches from Microsoft Corporation focused on the presentation software Microsoft Office PowerPoint which had been found to have fourteen security vulnerabilities.

One of the patches issued on Tuesday, May 13, posted on Microsoft Security Update page was a fix to a hole in MS Office PowerPoint 2000 Service Pack 3 that allows remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted PowerPoint file.

Microsoft has categorized this vulnerability as critical in which, according to the security bulletin, “an attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.”

In what security experts considers as an ‘easy’ month for Microsoft, only ten cases were critical and the other flaws found in PowerPoint were merely rated Important.  

As always, Microsoft offers in its Detection and Deployment guidance page several tools to help deploy the security update. Some of these tools are the Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer and the Office Detection Tool.

Meanwhile, technology giant Apple has also issued massive update for its operating system. The Mac OS x has been found to have 70 vulnerability issues which Apple has quickly noted.

Some of the flaws that were patched by Apple are input validation issues that activate when a user visits a malicious website using a proxy server. The action may result in cross-site scripting.

 
 

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