Microsoft Patches Office 2004 and 2008

It’s security update time for Microsoft Office, both the 2008 and 2004 versions. If you use Office 2008, you’ll need this 114 MB download, which fixes, among other things, “vulnerabilities in Office 2008 that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code”, as well as an installer problem, whereby the Office installer wrote files with an incorrect user ID, meaning that many users couldn’t access the programs and support files correctly. The update also fixes general reliability and a number of bugs.

For Office 2004, a 13 MB download, fixes bugs and two security issues: one for Excel, and a critical vulnerability

“that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a malformed Office file. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.”

Security Update for VLC Media Player

VideoLAN has released an update to its popular VLC media player that contains several security fixes, including one for an RTSP (real-time streaming protocol) weakness, similar to the one that recently affected QuickTime. VideoLAN doesn’t say whether these security fixes affect the Mac version of their software, but the Mac OS X package, like those for other platforms, has been updated to the same version number. If you use VCL to play media files, you should download this new version right away.

New in X5: Send Malware to Intego

You may recall that we discussed sending spam to Intego; not spamming us, but sending us samples of your spam to help us improve Personal Antispam X5’s spam filters. Well, with VirusBarrier X5, we have added a similar feature, allowing you to send us malware - or suspected malware - to Intego’s Virus Monitoring Center.

To do this, right-click on a file in the Finder, then select More > VirusBarrier X5 > Submit Suspicious File to Intego. This will send the selected file to Intego’s researchers, so can check it and, if it is indeed unknown malware, update our virus definitions as soon as possible.

If you come across any suspicious files - or even if you have files that get flagged as infected by VirusBarrier - send them on so we can keep ensuring that you are protected from all known viruses.

MacUser UK Reviews Internet Security Barrier X5

We couldn’t have said it better:

Intego has earned a solid name for security products and this new release of its Security Barrier Antispam Edition boosts its reputation further by significantly enhancing its Mac security suite.

Thus begins MacUsers review of Internet Security Barrier X5, from the latest issue of the magazine, and just published on the web. MacUser gives the suite a detailed review, looking closely at the programs it contains and pointing out new features. The editors of MacUser clearly know Intego software, since they highlight the many changes from the X4 versions of the programs.

The conclude with a statement that just about sums up what’s good about Intego software: “this suite is now easier to use and offers more protection than Norton AntiVirus.”