A quiet month of security fixes for Microsoft Office

Patch Tuesday for May 2024 is a quiet month for Microsoft Office with only four security fixes but one of them is rated ‘Critical’. Also a list of the latest build/version released for each version of Office.

Only Excel has a ‘Remote Code Execution’ bug which affects all supported Excel for Windows releases.

Sharepoint has two security fixes, one of them is tagged as ‘Critical’.

Update your version of Office to get this update or download separately from the link above.

Mark of the Web bug

There’s also a Windows security bug which directly affects Microsoft Office. Mark of the Web is a Windows file attribute which is used by Microsoft Office to identify documents from outside sources.

All supported versions of Windows 11 and Windows 10 are affected plus Windows Server 2008 to 2022. Details at CVE-2024-30050.  Use Windows Update to get this bug fix among many others.

According to Microsoft “An attacker can craft a malicious file that would evade Mark of the Web (MOTW) defenses, resulting in a limited loss of integrity and availability of security features such as Protected View in Microsoft Office, which rely on MOTW tagging.”

What’s the latest version of Office ?

With the release of these updates, here’s a list of the current version and build for each version of Office.  Check this against what’s installed at File | Account in any Office app (Outlook it’s Office Account)