Chances are that if you've heard about the recent Office security holes, you might have thought you weren't greatly impacted. The initial warnings may have misled you into thinking the problem effected only ODBC and Excel. In reality, the security issues are related to the Jet engine--which, of course, makes this a serious concern for Access users. Early press releases indicated that the vulnerability only involved Jet 3.51, the version that ships with Office 97. However, while fixing the 3.51 problem, Microsoft also uncovered a different set of vulnerabilities in the version included with Office 2000. Microsoft is being purposefully vague as to how an attack exploiting these vulnerabilities would work, so as not to educate anyone with a desire to do harm. Although there haven't been any reports of these weaknesses being exploited, Microsoft perceives a genuine risk and has created a patch that solves the problem. The patch also includes a tool that updates your system to require confirmation before

Internet Explorer opens any Office document. 

Additional information and links to the patch can be found at

http://www.microsoft.com/security/bulletins/ms99-030.asp

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