Microsoft has made a patch available to address the .wmf vulnerability that was already being targeted by the virus underground. The patch was released yesterday in the US following the security team finishing their testing ahead of schedule. Microsoft's monthly patch update release is due next Tuesday, so the decision to release this patch just four or five days ahead of the normal schedule indicates the serious nature of the threat. Mike Nash Corporate Vice President responsible for security at Microsoft wrote in the team blog that the decision to release ahead of schedule was driven by talking to customers and that they had indicated a preference to have the patch available out of cycle. Customers with automatic update turned on will automatically receive the update. At an enterprise level, Nash advised putting the patch through exactly the same testing procedures run on any security update before rolling it out. But he is confident of the robustness and quality of his team's work. 'We have an update that we believe in. The team worked very hard to run all of the key scenarios that we are concerned about. While we would always like to have more time, we are confident in the quality of the update.'