Microsoft fixes Office 2003 AD RMS/RMS issue (KB978551)

Microsoft has issued an hotfix for Word 2003 and one for Excel 2003 designed to fix from opening files protected with digital-rights management technologies even if they were authorized to access them. “Digital-rights management technologies introduced in Office 2003 let people define restrictions for documents to prevent other users from doing specific things with the files, such as forwarding or printing. The problem, blamed on an expired certificate, affected programs including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Information rights management is a feature Microsoft first added to Office 2003 — and one that’s been the bane of more than a few journalists and bloggers, including yours truly.” The patch is available for download here.