Submission + - Microsoft apologizes to rival and to users (msdn.com) 1
Geoffrey.landis writes: "Microsoft apologized to rival software vendor Corel Corp. for saying that Corel's file format posed a security risk, and issued a set of tools to unblock file types that had been blocked by default in the December Office 2003 service pack.
In David Leblanc's web log, LeBlanc says "We did a poor job of describing the default format changes," and goes on to explain "We stated that it was the file formats that were insecure, but this is actually not correct. A file format isn't insecure — it's the code that reads the format that's more or less secure." As noted by Richard Thurston "it is the parsing code that Office 2003 uses to open and save the file types that is less secure."
Larry Seltzer at pcmag.com also blog the story."
In David Leblanc's web log, LeBlanc says "We did a poor job of describing the default format changes," and goes on to explain "We stated that it was the file formats that were insecure, but this is actually not correct. A file format isn't insecure — it's the code that reads the format that's more or less secure." As noted by Richard Thurston "it is the parsing code that Office 2003 uses to open and save the file types that is less secure."
Larry Seltzer at pcmag.com also blog the story."
