Microsoft patches critical security issue

In today’s Patch Tuesday, Microsoft delivers one bulletin that fixes a vulnerability targeting Windows.

Vulnerability in the Embedded OpenType Font Engine Could Allow Remote Code Execution

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user viewed content rendered in a specially crafted Embedded OpenType (EOT) font in client applications that can render EOT fonts, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office PowerPoint, or Microsoft Office Word.

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. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

Jason Miller, Data and Security Team Leader at Shavlik Technologies comments: “Even though this bulletin affects all operating systems, Windows 2000 is the only operating system with a high severity rating. It is rated as “Critical” by Microsoft with the remaining operating systems rated as “Low.”

This is because Windows 2000 actively uses the vulnerable code to decompress the EOT files. The other operating systems do not use this code to do this. Although, Microsoft is rating this as Low instead of not applicable because it could be theoretically possible to have a third party program use the code on these operating systems. The likelihood of this scenario is extremely low. This bulletin addresses one vulnerability that is not publicly known at this time.”

Microsoft will host a webcast to address customer questions on these bulletins on January 13, 2010, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada).