Filed under: Security
Office 11.3.7 update fixes security hole
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends -- Patch Tuesday. Microsoft's once-a-month day to caulk and fill security holes and repair product bugs has a special treat for all of us this time around: a patch for Microsoft Office 2004. The vulnerability in question also affects Windows 2000, 2003 and XP along with Visual Basic 6.0, and could theoretically allow the crafter of a malicious web page to get full access to a targeted computer. See the technical details on the "vulnerability in OLE automation" here. Note that this exploit has not been seen in the wild; it was 'responsibly reported.'The 11.3.7 update to Office is downloadable now and weighs in at 8.7 MB, with no features mentioned except for the security fix. Happy patching!
Thanks, Scott.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Slevin said 3:19PM on 8-14-2007
Now with iWork 08 I no longer have MS Orifice. Goodbye bloatware. But I guess this is good for those who are forced to use MS Orifice
Reply
Scott said 3:20PM on 8-14-2007
Glad to be of service. Thanks for the post Michael. We love "Patch Tuesday" in my group. NOT!
Reply
Adam said 3:39PM on 8-14-2007
I'm running iWork now, too, because Word decided to SERIOUSLY freak out last week... I thought my machine was dead.
Reply
Martin said 3:53PM on 8-14-2007
I can't help but notice to disdain you use when you say "security holes" and "product bugs." This is because Apple never releases these types of things? Those are software updates.
Reply
makesense said 3:57PM on 8-14-2007
how ridiculous....MS issues product updates; Apple got the disease, and issued updates last week - the day that new products were announced; eg, the new aluminum keyboard would not entirely work without a 31 mb patch installed
why have you folks waited to dump MS Office. you could have had the free openoffice for years
Reply
Michael Rose said 4:04PM on 8-14-2007
#4 -- I'm not sure where you see disdain; I've used similar wording regarding Apple security holes in the past. Would you have preferred "security issues" and "bug fixes?" Or "incompletely implemented feature updates?"
:-)
Reply
Will Royall said 4:13PM on 8-14-2007
Hey, as soon as Apple releases an Exchange client that is comparable to MS Entourage I'll be happy to dump MS Office. Until then, Office 2004 stays on my Mac.
Reply
Angela said 5:52PM on 8-14-2007
Yesterday I removed Office from all of our Macs due to the fact we no longer need them, thanks to the new iWork improvements (Numbers in particular). Yeah!
Reply
Mark S said 2:49AM on 8-15-2007
Some of us still need Office for 100% compatibility with Word and Excel documents. iWork '08 has greatly improved importing but it's still not perfect (as can be expected). So, Office updates are a welcome thing. In any case, I still prefer Pages over Word for day to day use.
Reply
Quine said 4:39AM on 8-15-2007
All I have to say is, until someone gives me ms office for free, whenever someone sends me a word doc from now on it had better open in iWork. If it doesn't, that's the sender's fault, not mine.
Reply