Security Patches for Office 98, Office 2001, and Office X -- Microsoft has issued security updates for Macintosh versions of Office 98 (1.5 MB), Office 2001 (2 MB), and Office X (2.8 MB). The updates correct two security issues, one where a holder of a valid security certificate could generate bogus subordinate certificates which Office would believe to be valid (Microsoft security bulletin MS02-050), and another where field codes in Microsoft Word could be used to gather information surreptitiously from users' documents in some circumstances (Microsoft security bulletin MS02-059). The security certificate problem is the same one for which Microsoft released new versions of Internet Explorer last month.

<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/download/ security.asp>
<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/?url= /technet/security/bulletin/MS02-050.asp>
<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/?url= /technet/security/bulletin/MS02-059.asp>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/06947>

Significantly, the security update for Office X also includes unspecified improvements which may improve application stability under Jaguar, welcome news for frustrated users of Word X who have experienced inordinate program crashes since upgrading to Jaguar. [GD]