14 DAY TRIAL // As it had promised last week, Microsoft has launched on Tuesday 3 patches for fixing some flaws discovered in its programs, namely two such updates for the Windows OS and one for the Microsoft Word program within the Office suite.
Two of the security updates are fixing flaws which are related to the imaging technology used by Windows, which could potentially allow an attacker to take control of a system simply by having the user view a digital image that contains software code that exploits the flaw, which could be installed on a computer without the user's knowledge, as reported by the Reuters agency.
"Simply by viewing one of these malicious images you can become infected with anything from adware and spyware to any other suspicious code," said Oliver Friedrichs, senior manager at Symantec Corp.'s Security Response Center.
The Word security breach, which affects different versions of the program launched between 2000 and 2004, could let an attacker take over a personal computer if a user opens a document file containing software code designed to exploit the flaw.
The patches for the three breaches, deemed "critical" by Microsoft, are a part of its monthly security bulletin system, which it adopted in 2003 to make it easier for users and computer system administrators to install patches and keep track of vulnerabilities in Microsoft's software.