Microsoft Releases Two Bulletins for May’s Patch Tuesday

This month, Microsoft has issued just two bulletins for Patch Tuesday, one each for Windows and Office. These two bulletins addresses one vulnerability in the Windows operating system and two in the Office productivity suite. Compared to last month’s 17 bulletins which patched 64 vulnerabilities, this month’s patch can be considered very light.

Out of these two bulletins, the Windows bulletin has a critical security rating; while the Office bulletin has only an important rating. Both patches solve remote code execution flaws in the affected software.

This month, many people may not have to patch at all. The Windows patch only applies to server operating systems, leaving Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 untouched, and the Office productive suite patch doesn’t apply to the latest Office 2010 and Office 2011 for Mac versions. Systems which do need the bulletins may need rebooting.

# Rating Impact Affected software
1 Critical Remote Code Execution Windows Server 2003/Server 2008/Server 2008 R2
2 Important Remote Code Execution PowerPoint 2002 (Office XP)/PowerPoint 2003/PowerPoint 2007/Office 2004 for Mac/Office 2008 for Mac/Open XML File Format Converter for Mac/Office Compatibility Pack

The bulletins are released on Tuesday, and there will be the usual webcast the following day at 11:00am PDT to address customer questions.

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