Microsoft has released a security advisory explaining its decision to block the 17-year-old Indeo codec, which compresses and decompresses video, from being used by any application that accesses the Internet.

“It’s unclear exactly how many unpatched vulnerabilities the Indeo codec contains, but at least two security companies – VeriSign iDefense and Fortinet – issued their own Indeo bug alerts Tuesday,” writes Computerworld’s Gregg Keizer. “The vulnerability uncovered by iDefense was reported to Microsoft more than a year ago.”

“It’s unusual for Microsoft to skip patching known vulnerabilities and instead disable – ‘deprecate’ in programming terminology – bits of code,” Keizer writes.

Click here to read the Computerworld story.