December 2008 Update Release
On Tuesday, December 9th, 2008, Office released 18 security updates in 4 bulletins addressing a total of 15 security vulnerabilities. The security updates apply to the following products:
- Microsoft Office Excel 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, Excel Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer, and the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack and the 2007 Microsoft Office System, as described in security bulletin MS08-074.
- Microsoft Office Word 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, Word Viewer 2003, and the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack and the 2007 Microsoft Office System, as described in security bulletin MS08-072.
- Microsoft Office XP, Project 2003, and Project 2007, as described in security bulletin MS08-070. Note: the security update for Office XP is available in the Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Traditional Taiwan), and Korean locales only. Other locales of Office XP are not affected.
- Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 32-bit edition and 64-bit edition, as described in security bulletin MS08-077.
For complete details, see "Microsoft Security Updates for December 2008" for home users and "Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for December 2008" for advanced users. Office also released two updates for the Outlook 2003 and 2007 Junk Email Filters.
Office also released an update to Office 2003. This update fixes a problem that prevents Office patches from installing when the Office Source Engine (OSE) service is disabled, which is one of the most common reasons for Office patches to fail to install. The Office Source Engine is used by Office to manage Office files during patch installation and is required for patch installation to succeed. After installing the update, the OSE service will run and patches will install successfully even if the service is disabled. If you are using Microsoft Update, Automatic Updates, Windows Server Update Services, or any other deployment tool that uses the Microsoft Update agent, the update will only be offered to your system if the Office Source Engine service is disabled. The update available from the Microsoft Download Center will install on all Office 2003 client systems. If you are using Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, you may need to restart your computer after installing the update for it to take effect.