Microsoft delivers mega PowerPoint patch

As expected, Microsoft today patched a six week-old critical vulnerability in PowerPoint, the presentation maker that's part of the popular Office suite, using a single security update.

But that one update patched 14 separate vulnerabilities, 11 of which were rated "critical," Microsoft highest threat ranking.

Also, while Microsoft patched all still-supported Windows editions of Office -- including Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003 and Office 2007 -- it was not able to complete fixes for the three vulnerabilities that also affect Office 2004 and Office 2008 on Macs. Fixes for those editions were not ready, the company said.

This is the first time that Microsoft has issued patches, but not plugged holes in every affected version, a fact the company itself acknowledged.

"We normally do not update one supported platform before another, but given this situation of a package available for an entire product line that protects the vast majority of customers at risk within the predictable release cycle, we made a decision to go early with the Windows packages," said Jonathan Ness, an engineer with the Microsoft Security Response Center, in a post to a company blog.

"None of the [PowerPoint] exploit samples we have analyzed will reliably exploit the Mac version, so we didn't want to hold the Windows security update while we wait for Mac packages," added Ness.

Elsewhere, Microsoft said it would "issue updates on the regular bulletin release cycle for these product lines when testing is complete." Microsoft's next regularly-scheduled patch day is June 9.

Eric Schultze, the chief technology officer at patch management vendor Shavlik Technologies, said Microsoft made the right call to push out Windows patches now. "It makes perfect sense," said Schultze, "since the zero-day attacks only worked on Windows."

In early April, when Microsoft admitted that PowerPoint contained at least one vulnerability, it also noted that attack code was already circulating, at least in small numbers. Hackers exploited that flaw, and could do so with the others, by duping a user into opening a malformed PowerPoint file.

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