Microsoft Tuesday confirmed that Windows
XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) omits a critical security update issued by the company
in November 2006.

The company acknowledged the omission while attempting to clarify the impact
XP SP3 has on existing installations of Flash Player, an add-on that Microsoft
bundled with Windows XP when it first shipped in 2001. Microsoft has patched
Flash Player in the past using Windows Update, notably with the security update
MS06-069 it issued Nov. 14, 2006.

MS06-069,
the AWOL update, patched five vulnerabilities in Adobe
Systems Inc.'s Flash Player, and was rated "critical" by Microsoft,
the company's highest threat ranking.

Microsoft did not explain why the patch is missing from the service pack, which
it has billed as including "all previously released updates."

Flash Player has made security news of late; last week, for example, researchers
revealed that hackers were actively exploiting Flash Player 9.0.115.0, an edition
released by Adobe in December 2007. On Monday, Computerworld reported that Windows
XP SP3 shipped
with that out-of-date and vulnerable version, rather than the newer and
more secure Flash Player 9.0.124.0, which Adobe issued in early April, about
two weeks before Microsoft wrapped up the service pack and began distributing
it to OEMs.

At the time, Microsoft declined to answer questions about XP SP3 and Flash,
including why it wasn't able to add the newest version to XP SP3 and what advice
it would give users.

On Tuesday, however, a Microsoft spokeswoman issued a clarification, saying
that XP SP3 "does not ship any version of Flash in the Windows XP Service
Pack 3 update that customers use to update existing SP2 machines. Any statement
that Microsoft installs any versions of Flash Player with Windows XP SP3 is
inaccurate."

Instead, said the spokeswoman in an e-mail, XP SP3 has a hands-off approach
to Flash; it does not disturb whatever version of the popular Internet multimedia
software that the user has installed. If, for instance, users have upgraded
to Flash Player 9.0.115.0 themselves, then that is the version that remains
on the PC after the XP SP3 update.

The same goes for users who had earlier applied the MS06-069 patch, which updated
Flash to version 8.0.33.0 in late 2006, but who have not refreshed Flash since
then. "The Windows XP SP3 update has no impact on systems where customers
have applied MS06-069, which has been available to XP users on [Windows Update/Automatic
Updates] since November 2006," she said.

That hands-off attitude also extends to new installations of XP SP3. In fact,
said Microsoft's spokeswoman, new PCs assembled with the latest service pack
don't touch the original

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