This update will be like a slide show that IT pros have seen before. It comes one month after a zero-day PowerPoint remote code execution vulnerability came to light for which the software giant issued a security advisory.
In that April security advisory, Redmond indicated that it was only "aware of limited and targeted attacks that attempt to use this vulnerability." Moreover, the advisory applied only to older Microsoft Office versions up through Office 2003.
With May's patch release coming up, the company apparently isn't taking any chances. This fix will apply to Microsoft Office 2000 and Office 2003, as well as Office XP and 2007 Microsoft Office systems.
At a more granular level, the patch touches on PowerPoint Viewer 2003 Service Pack 3, PowerPoint Viewer 2007 SP1 and SP2, and all versions of Microsoft Office Compatibility Packs for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 file formats.
The new PowerPoint security flaw has been described as "extremely critical" by independent software security vendors, such as Denmark-based Secunia, which provides an alert here.
Redmond says the patch "may" require a restart.
As usual, Microsoft refers those interested in nonsecurity updates delivered through Windows Update, Microsoft Update and Windows Server Updates to this Knowledgebase link .
