Both Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008 have updates out in the wild today, bringing their version numbers to 11.5.1 and 12.1.2 respectively. According to Micrsoft, the updates “contain several improvements to enhance stability and performance”—whoa, are these guys taking a cue from Apple’s documentation writers? The update for Office 2004 weighs in at only fifteen paltry megabytes while the 2008 version sports a heftier 160MB (and will take you only 13 hours and 57 minutes to download on a 56K modem).
Apparently, among those improvements is one for a vulnerability that “an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code”. If that sounds eerie to you, as it rightfully should, then you should stop reading this and scamper off to Microsoft’s Mactopia to grab the updates or fire up Microsoft Office AutoUpdate. For all you know, someone could be trying to mess with your memory right now. With malicious code. Overwriting the contents and everything.
If you hurry, they’ll throw in a bag of paperclips and a copy of Microsoft Bob, absolutely free of cost!* Try not to trip on the way over there in all that excitement, will you?
*Conditions apply. Offer valid only till stocks last.
Very humorous post, Aayush, good work.
Off to update!
Are there people actually using Office 2008? I decided not to after finding out about the royal screw job we got in losing Macro support.