Microsoft has patched a critical hole in Windows 2000 that could allow an attacker to take control of a computer if a user viewed a maliciously crafted Embedded OpenType font in Internet Explorer, Office PowerPoint or Word.
The security bulletin, released on Tuesday, is rated 'low' severity for Windows 7, Vista, XP, Server 2003 and Server 2008 operating systems, according to the Microsoft advisory, which gave credit for discovering the vulnerability to a Google researcher.
Meanwhile, security experts said a patch for a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe Reader and Acrobat that Adobe released on Tuesday was even more important than the Microsoft bulletin. The hole was discovered in mid-December and is being exploited by attacks in the wild to deliver Trojan horse programs that install backdoor access on computers.
For more on this story, see Fixes in for Windows 2000, Adobe Reader on CNET News.
