News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

December 19, 2006

security

MacBU speaks out on premature patching

Posted Dec. 19, ’06, 9:57 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Security

Office UpdateIt’s tough working for a big company. There are all sorts of people to keep in the loop, testing to be done, and protocols to be followed. Not like these fly-by-night operations you see all over the web. We’re talking Microsoft here.

So when they prematurely publish a patch for their most popular software program, you’d expect some damage control, right? Better late than never, I guess, the MacBU has responded to questions about why the patch was pulled.

On Tuesday, while testing that download process for an upcoming Office patch, we accidentally released the bits to the live servers. That patch included some normal stability issues as well as preparatory work for an upcoming security release. All the code in the patch had been tested and approved except for the security-related bits, which we weren’t ready to release.
The team also apologizes for the instructions that told users to uninstall the patch, since the only way to do that on OS X is to reinstall Office. Fortunately, there’s apparently “no urgent need to uninstall the patch,” so don’t freak out.

Most interestingly, from my perspective, is that the MacBU confirmed that the patch did not apparently fix for the recently announced zero-day exploits in Office—the ones for which Microsoft advises you to “not open or save Word files.” Great. How about a solution for that one now?

Update: Microsoft has now officially released the patches for Office v.X and Office 2004. They can be installed regardless of whether or not you applied the earlier, pulled patch.

[via Infinite Loop]


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