Microsoft has eight security bulletins prepared for the upcoming Patch Tuesday. Five of them are rated critical, including three that address problems in Windows. A patch for the zero-day PowerPoint flaw being exploited in the wild is not on the menu.Microsoft has a big Patch Tuesday planned for April 14 with the release of
eight security bulletins to cover eight vulnerabilities.
The release includes five "critical" bulletins, including three
affecting Microsoft Windows. The other two critical bulletins address issues in
Microsoft Office Excel and Internet Explorer. According to Microsoft, IE 8 is
not affected by the aforementioned bulletin, but earlier versions of the
browser are. The Windows vulnerabilities span multiple editions of the
operating system. More specific information about what versions are
affected by each bulletin
can be found here.
Accompanying the five critical bulletins are two other Windows bulletins
rated "important" and a third bulletin affecting ISA
(Internet Security and Acceleration Server) that is
rated "moderate."
Missing from the patches is a fix for a flaw
in the Microsoft Office PowerPoint software the company recently warned is
being targeted by attackers. According to Microsoft, the malicious
PowerPoint files are detected by the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner as Exploit:Win32/Apptom.gen.
The products affected by the vulnerability are Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2000 Service Pack 3, PowerPoint
2002 Service Pack 3 and PowerPoint 2003 Service Pack 3. PowerPoint 2007 is
unaffected.
The patches are slated to be released April 14.