Microsoft Security Bulletin MS02-059 outlines a security problem that opens up certain Microsoft Word and Excel files to “information disclosure” when their fields depend on external updates. Macintosh versions affected by the problem include Word 98, Word 2001 and Word X. (Mac versions of Excel do not appear to suffer from this problem.)
Field codes enable Word documents to share data from other documents. Microsoft said that it’s possible to “maliciously use field codes” to steal information from a user without the user being aware.
Separate updates are available for each Mac version of Microsoft Word affected by this issue. Make sure to have the latest version of Word installed before applying the patch — further instructions and links are available from Microsoft’s Web site.