We can expect 7 updates next week from Microsoft on the monthly patch day for July. Four of the updates will be for Windows, and 3 for Microsoft Office. There will be at least one critical update for each. It’s expected that we’ll see an update for the Excel issues that have been talked about the last few weeks. There are a number of publicly known Internet Explorer vulnerabilities, but it’s not known if Microsoft has prepared patches for those yet. It should be noted that many times 1 patch will cover a number of issues. This is commonly seen with Internet Explorer cumulative updates where several vulnerabilities are addressed with one update.
Tag: Microsoft Office
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Another Microsoft Office Vulnerability
Hot on the heels of the Microsoft Word patch there’s a new threat to Microsoft Office. This vulnerability is with Excel documents. According to the MS security response center blog, they’ve received one report of a system being attacked by a previously unknown vulnerability in Excel. The moral of the story is to be suspicious of any attachments, be they programs, or claim to be images, word documents, excel documents, fluffy bunnies or what…. If you weren’t expecting an attachment in email wait and find out if it’s legit through other channels.
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Microsoft February Patch day advance notice
Microsoft has given advance notice that next Tuesday they will be releasing 7 updates for Windows, as many as 5 of these will be tagged as critical. The Security Fix has a bit on the advance notice as does Sans. Looks like one of the critical updates will be for Media Player, 4 for Windows itself and 2 updates for Microsoft Office. A reboot will be required for some of the updates.
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Nyxem.E virus delete files payload
F-secure has some details on a dangerous payload for the Nyxem.E virus. (The Nyxem.E virus is very similar to the Email-Worm.Win32.VB.bi that was talked about earlier in the week.) In fact, this virus seems to be spreading fairly well (not the blockbuster spread of older email viruses, but it is spreading.) Anyway, according to f-secure it will on the 3rd of the month, delete all files matching the following patterns. *.doc *.xls *.mdb *.mde *.ppt *.pps *.zip *.rar *.pdf *.psd *.dmp *(on all accessible drives.)
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WMF exploit vs. Windows 98 again…
If you’ve visited here in the last few days, you’ll have noticed that I’ve been trying to test the WMF exploit against a Windows 98 Virtual machine since January 1st. I initially started out with a default install, which didn’t work, (for the exploit), then added irfanview (didn’t work), tried the exploit as a jpg, gif, htm, doc file extension, (didn’t work) and then this morning saw that I’m not the only one that’s been testing this….
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Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 5 – Update your software
Okay – so after the last article you’ve inventoried what software you use on a PC and you know what services (server’s) the pc runs that you’ve told it to. You even know what passes as “normal” startup programs. Now it’s time to put that to use. It’s time to keep up with updates for the operating system, any of the programs you use form time to time, and any programs that listen as a service (actively listen for incoming network connections.)
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Good article on what OpenOffice could learn from Firefox
There’s a good writeup on what OpenOffice.org could learn from firefox. It raises some interesting points. One of which is that software can be designed to meet the needs of say, 60% of the market, the framework firefox has for extenstions helps that other 40% find a way that the browser can meet their needs.
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The perils of Metadata in documents
Loose lips sink ships, so the old saying goes. These days documents are emailed back and forth and many times, revisions are made to “polite the text” up or “sanitize” or “redact sensitive information”. With many file formats though, the metadata about the revisions (or even the old versions of the data itself) are still there. The Security Fix has a great article on the topic today.
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Microsoft Office tips to annoying little problems
PCMag has an article on a number of little puzzling “how do I”‘s in Microsoft Office. It looks like a great listing and worth adding to anyone’s battery of MS Office tips.
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OpenDocument format (ODF) versus Microsoft’s opening of MS XML
There are a couple articles out today (last few days) on the growing conflict between the ODF (Open Document Format) Microsoft’s XML. For starters, the ODF came about as a response/alternative to closed formats such as Microsoft’s. The concept is that it is in the public interest for information to be stored in formats that are open and accessible to anyone. Last week Microsoft fired a volley with a modification to the license for their MS Open XML. They hope the file format will become an international standard. The format is to be used for the next version of Microsoft Office.