In its attempt to address at least 14 critical vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office PowerPoint, Microsoft Corp released one comprehensive security update for its monthly Patch report on Tuesday. The vulnerabilities repaired pertained to giving remote hackers the access to carry out malicious code on computers with the aim of infecting systems and stealing data.

Reiterating that the critical PowerPoint flaw - for which a security advisory was issued by the company in April - was exploited for "limited and targeted attacks," Microsoft said that the recently-released patches would protect Windows PCs against potential threat.

Though the slip-up impinges on various Microsoft Office PowerPoint versions, the company gave a less severe ranking of "importance" to those affecting the later versions, including Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 and Microsoft Office for Mac 2008.

The bugs affect that system when the users open a maliciously-crafted PowerPoint add-on in an e-mail, which downloads a Trojan instantly onto their systems. Once the PCs become infected, the attacker can either run code, or take absolute control of the affected PC for stealing, altering or deleting sensitive data.

Eric Schultze, Shavlik Technologies Chief Technology Officer elaborated: "It will allow code to run on the person's machine under the context of their user account. It could do anything, deleting files, stealing credit card numbers - basically anything it wants."