Microsoft has announced that is has reissued one of the security bulletins initially made available on January 9, 2007. The Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-002 is designed to address multiple vulnerabilities in a range of Microsoft Excel editions. The maximum severity rating for these vulnerabilities is critical as they allow for remote code execution.

Microsoft Security Program Manager Christopher Budd informed that the security bulletin re-released impacts only customers running Excel 2000. "If you're not running Excel 2000, this re-release doesn't apply to you and you don't need to take any action," revealed Budd.

In fact, MS07-002 was re-released for Excel 2000 only. According to Microsoft, following the original availability of the security update, there have been discovered phonetic processing issues related to the Korean, Chinese, or Japanese languages. The re-issued patch addresses and resolves those problems.

"The original version released on January 9, 2007 did fully protect against the security issues discussed in the bulletin. However, after release we discovered that the security update did not correctly process the phonetic information that is embedded in files that are created by using Excel in the Korean, Chinese, or Japanese executable mode," explained Budd.

The Redmond Company advised all Excel 2000 customers to download and install the re-issued security update. "It is being released through all the same distribution channels as the original update. It is also supported by the same detection and deployment tools as the original update," said Budd.