What's coming on May's Patch Tuesday

Stephen Withers
Friday, 09 May 2008 03:41

Your IT - Home IT

Microsoft has a mixed crop of updates for us this month, affecting old and new versions of Windows, Office - including the Mac version - and the company's range of security products.

A vulnerability in the Jet database engine is rated critical for Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003, including 64-bit editions. More recent versions are apparently unaffected by the problem.

The May bulletins will also include patches for Office and other software.

The Word problem is only rated critical for Word 2000. It has an important rating for Word 2002, 2003, 2004, 2007 (Outlook 2007 is also affected) and 2008. It also affects Word Viewer 2003 and the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats.

Similarly, an addressed flaw in Publisher is critical in the 2000 version, but merely important for 2002, 2003 and 2007.

Moderate updates are scheduled for Live OneCare, Antigen for Exchange, Antigen for SMTP Gateway, Windows Defender, Forefront Client Security, Forefront Security for Exchange Server, and Forefront Security for SharePoint. Also in the security field, there will be a low rating update for Standalone System Sweeper.

Also planned for release on May 13 are a new version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool, a pair of updates addressing application compatibility issued with Server 2008 and Vista, and an update for the Windows Mail junk email filter.