PowerPoint under attack

A few months ago it was Microsoft Word. Last month it was Excel. Now PowerPoint is under attack through a critical hole. Why so many Office flaws so quickly?

Part of the reason is that "black hat" hackers now have cracking tools called "fuzzers" that can automatically run through thousands of combinations of programming calls to find the one (or the dozens) that will crash a program. Such holes fetch good money from valid security firms that pay bounties, as well as from the Internet black market.

In addition, new vulnerabilities are cropping up at a faster rate in popular applications, such as Web browsers and media players, than in Windows, a fact not lost on crackers. When they find a new hole in Office, for example, they can mix-and-match an exploit that hits it with existing viruses and other malware for a quick attack that strikes before a patch appears--a bit like adding the latest targeting system to an existing missile.