“You may have seen recent reports on the web of a security issue in the installer for Mac Office 2008. The issue is that our installer is incorrectly granting ownership of the files to a particular local user as it installs them, so that if your Mac actually has a second local user and that user is not an administrator on your Mac, they could modify your Office 2008 install. The issue does not expose the Office 2008 install to modifications by any networked user account or to any local account other than the second one created on your Mac,” Erik Schwiebert posts in Microsoft’s Office for Mac blog.
“Microsoft and the MacBU take all security issues seriously, and we intend to fix this situation in several ways. First of all, if you have already installed Office 2008, you can run two commands in the Terminal to fix the file ownership and remove the security concern (see instructions below). Second, the MacBU is working on an update to Office 2008 that will automatically fix the file ownership for you. This update will be made available via Microsoft’s AutoUpdate tool and via a web download,” Schwiebert writes.
Instructions for updating the file ownership settings yourself (admin required) here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft is really good at promising; delivering, not so much. Do you really need Microsoft Office? Give Apple’s free 30-day iWork ’08 trial a try and find out for yourself.
