March Patch Tuesday merely 'important'

Stephen Withers
Monday, 08 March 2010 09:04

Business IT - Security

Microsoft has provided advance notification that two bulletins will be issued on this month's Patch Tuesday, addressing a total of eight issues.

Unusually, there will be no critical updates from Microsoft on March's Patch Tuesday.

The company will release two bulletins - one for Windows, the other for Office - that deliver fixes for a total of eight vulnerabilities.

Both bulletins will cover vulnerabilities that allow remote code execution, but they only have a maximum severity rating of important, apparently because exploits require tricking users into opening maliciously crafted files.

The Windows bulletin covers Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. The Office bulletin appears to be specific to Excel files and affects Office XP, 2002, 2004 and 2008; SharePoint Server 2007; and various file viewer and conversion tools.

The help/VBScript issue disclosed last week by Microsoft will not be addressed by this month's security updates. Microsoft is "continuing to monitor" that situation, said Jerry Bryant, senior security communications manager lead at the Microsoft Security Response Center.

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