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Microsoft Pulls Some Non-Security Updates For Microsoft Office 2010, 2013 and 2016 That It Released Earlier This Month (betanews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the deja-vu dept.

Mark Wilson, writing for BetaNews: Having released a series of updates for Office 2010, 2013 and 2016 as part of this month's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has now pulled two of them and advised sysadmins to uninstall the updates if they have already been installed. In both instances -- KB4461522 and KB2863821 -- Microsoft says that the problematic updates can lead to application crashes. While this is not as serious a problem as, say, data loss, it does little to quieten the fears that have been voiced about the quality control Microsoft has over its updates.

18 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Kms bypass by AbRASiON · · Score: 2

    These updates didn't buy any chance mess with some of the kms activation cracks, did they? Hypothetically, of course! Just asking.

    Hypothetically 6 friends and family members all of a sudden, hypothetically may have contacted me.

    1. Re: Kms bypass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Those updates were made partially for the same reason everyone else made an update, which was a bug associated with SSL in the e-commerce space. Why havenâ(TM)t the other vendors recalled their patches? Does anyone know?

    2. Re:Kms bypass by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Were they Office related KMS issues? Or did MS just issue another Windows Defender definition update that once again reset the "ignored files" list.

      Honestly Windows tries to nuke KMS every month.

    3. Re:Kms bypass by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      Honestly Windows tries to nuke KMS every month.

      And fails. Every month...

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    4. Re:Kms bypass by AbRASiON · · Score: 1

      Hypothetically.... I've never seen office deactivate itself in 5 years. Suddenly 6 of then?

    5. Re:Kms bypass by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Could be either way. Point is that Defender updates have a long history of targetting KMS, maybe they just finally figured out how to get at the Office ones? Either way I imagine that if it was the updates to Office that broke KMS then MS probably wouldn't pull them for that reason, ... unless they also broke the legitimate activations.

  2. New patch made available. by xack · · Score: 4, Funny

    You can download it here

    1. Re:New patch made available. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I try to avoid IBM software, how about these.

    2. Re:New patch made available. by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Funny

      That patch broke the ribbon. There's a weird menu system that millenials don't know how to use.

    3. Re:New patch made available. by pefisher · · Score: 1

      The Ribbon: We still hate it, after all these years.

  3. Those updates also disabled macros in Word by dhuv · · Score: 3, Informative

    Macros in Office are a big security issue. Once of those updates (I believe it was KB4461522) disabled macros even if the code was signed by Microsoft and is valid. Unfortunately we use this functionality at the moment and had to ask users to remove that update on affected systems.

    1. Re:Those updates also disabled macros in Word by dhuv · · Score: 1

      Actually I confused a couple of issues. KB4461522 actually stopped Office from working in Win XP. I know XP is not supported anymore but there are people using it.

  4. Minor correction by Zocalo · · Score: 1

    These two updates are not actually from the official "Patch Tuesday" release, but from a few days prior and are concerned with the introduction of a new "Era" (essentially an Emperor's reign) in Japan. They appear to be functional tweaks concerning how Japanese dates are displayed so, unusally for Microsoft, uninstalling them isn't going to leave your system vulnerable to any known security issues.

    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    1. Re: Minor correction by Zocalo · · Score: 2

      Depends on your network requirements and your appetite for risk vs. saving time. Most of my clients run engineering networks with strict change control processes so patches are tested first and manually pushed via WSUS only when they're confident they won't cause any issues. I suspect that very few of them will have even pushed out the November security patches yet, let alone a couple of feature updates to amend the date format display for a single country, since they tend to rely on Defence in Depth to provide additional layers of security. Of course, if you don't have WSUS, then you don't have many options since MS doesn't have a simple way to automatically defer installation for a few days after release in case they should release yet another bad patch, although i guess you could do something with scripting.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  5. The s***show continues by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 1

    As expected from Microsoft.

  6. getting scary by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1
    The update/roll back, Customer as quality control, and it's issues that Microsoft has been having lately would seem to indicate that Microsoft has completely lost control of their process. I wonder how long until an update brings on a real W10 apocalypse?

    Popcorn and Tequila time.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  7. Truth in advertising! by Dunbal · · Score: 1

    Non security updates pulled, because they weren't secure...?

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  8. geez, if it won't work, it's secure, right? by swschrad · · Score: 1

    kwitcherbitchin, a dead app is a secure app. all hail Microsoft ;)

    --
    if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?