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PowerPoint ZeroDay Vulnerability Exploited
whitehatlurker writes to mention a WashingtonPost.com article about another unpatched flaw with Microsoft Office. The bug, part of the PowerPoint software, has already been used in the wild, and may be connected to an industrial espionage case. From the article: "This undocumented flaw does not appear to have been addressed in any of the 13 security updates Microsoft shipped this week to mend a variety of problems in Office software. As Security Fix and others have noted, some of the work Microsoft has done in hardening the security of the Windows operating system has forced the bad guys to look for lower-hanging fruit in applications that run on top of Windows, so we may see more Office flaws under attack."
Most of what you wrote I answered in another response, but as to these:
l 06/07-06OpenSourceProjectPR.mspx "bidirectional translation support"
"you don't mind using a piece of software which no-one will have audited,"
What makes you think office was audited?
Gee, I don't know, maybe the fact that is a discussion on a vulnerability which was found in PowerPoint? That vulnerability didn't find itself.
"you can't wait for Office 2007 for ODF,"
The ODF support in 2007 will be read only. It will also be crippled from the looks of it.
https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/ju
"and you don't need a rich macro API."
You have no idea what you are talking about. None at all. Every part of OO is scriptable.
Even if OOo was as richly scriptable as Office (which it simply isn't), it's multiplatform and thus can't have the same integration with other parts of the OS.
"Disclaimer: I'm not an MS fanboy, "
Yes you are. If you weren't you would not have lied so much.
"Yes you are."? I hate replying to a post only to realise I'm responding to someone with a mental age of a schoolboy.. You have yet to point out where I have said something which isn't true, but you have said Office isn't audited and will only have read only support for ODF; both false.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
"I've used Openoffice on systems that have 96MB of RAM -- Other than it being a bit slow. I have not noticed any usability issues."
New rule: If you don't know what a page file/swap partition is, you don't get the rest of your post read.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);