Some of Word's Galleries are Missing

A new feature in Microsoft Word 2007 is the Building Block Gallery. There is a content control with a drop-down list of galleries, but Microsoft says that not all the galleries are displayed. Some of the ones that aren't are the Bibliography, Watermark, and Cover Page galleries. At http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930201 they say this behavior is by design, but they don't say anything about how to see the missing ones.

Media Center Update Causes DRM Bug

Once you have installed Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2, you may have problems with Windows Media Digital Rights Manager files. Try to play back one of the protected files, and you may get an error message similar to one of these:
Restricted Content: Restrictions set by the broadcaster and/or originator of the content prohibit playback of the program on this computer
or
0xC00D2751: A problem has occurred in the Digital Rights Management component. Contact Microsoft product support.
Microsoft has issued a new fix to take care of the bug introduced by Update Rollup 2. Get the latest fix at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/913800/. Watch here to find out what bugs this latest bug fix introduced.

Threat Against Windows, Including Vista

TThe Microsoft Security Response Center may have had a slight delay in the beginning of their Christmas holiday, with reports of a public exploit against the Client Server Run-Time Subsystem in Windows 2000 SP4, Windows Server 2003 SP1, Windows XP SP1, Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista operating systems. According to their blog, the attacker must have authenticated access to a computer system in order to carry out the attack, which makes it potentially less damaging. More interesting, however, is that Vista is included on the list of vulnerable systems. Read the whole thing at http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/12/22/new-report-of-a-windows-vulnerability.aspx.

Anti-Phishing Speed Up for IE

The anti-phishing shield in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 may cause the browser to bog down and run slowly if you visit a web page that has lots of frames, or if you browse through many different frames over a short period of time. Microsoft has a fix for this. IE 7 users can get it at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928089.

Vista Changes Unpacking Method

Microsoft has changed the way that the Microsoft Update Standalone packages work for Windows Vista. The old way to view the contents or extract the contents of one of the packages will not work -- especially if you are trying to do this on a non-Vista computer. It's because they use the "New and Improved" (those are air-quotes) Intra-Package Delta (IPD) compression technology. You will need to get the Windows Vista OEM Pre-installation Kit (OPK) if you want to view and extract. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928636 for the details.

An Accidental Patch from Microsoft

A security patch for Microsoft Office for the Mac was accidently released ahead of time via auto-update. According to the Microsoft Security Response Center blog, they are still testing this patch, and a pre-release version was accidently released. They've taken the patch out of circulation, and they also recommend that you uninstall the patch. See http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/12/13/information-on-accidental-posting-of-pre-release-security-updates-for-office-for-mac.aspx for the details.

Windows Media Format Bugs Allow Attacks

There are two critical bugs in Windows Media Format files that can affect almost all current versions of Microsoft Windows. One bug is in the way that Windows handles Advanced Systems Format (ASF) files, and the other is in Advanced Stream Redirector (ASX) files. Run into one of the maliciously-designed files at a website or in email, and the attacker may be able to take control of your system. It affects Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003, but not Windows Vista. It affects all versions of Microsoft Windows Media Format 7.1 through 9.5 Series Runtime, but version 11 is not affected. Microsoft has patches available at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS06-078.mspx.

Another MS Word Attack

There is a new zero-day attack against Microsoft Word, apparently unrelated to the zero-day attack discussed in the 12.6 BugBlog. It affects Word 2000, 2002, 2003, and the Word Viewer 2003. However, the brand new Word 2007 is not affected. (A cynical person would say this is all a marketing ploy to get people to upgrade. Luckily, I'm not cynical.) The issue is being actively exploited, according to Microsoft. At this point, it does not appear that there will be a fix for either of these issues in time for the 12/12 Patch Tuesday Security Releases. See http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/12/10/new-report-of-a-word-zero-day.aspx for more.