If a picture is worth a thousand words, with the latest Windows vulnerability, some of those words might be "compromised," "rooted" and "infected."

On Tuesday, Microsoft released a patch for a flaw in the Windows Metafile and Enhanced Metafile image formats. The vulnerability could allow a specially created image in the WMF or EMF formats to compromise a computer running any recent version of Windows, including Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows 2003 Service Pack 1, the software giant said in advisory MS05-053.

This is not the first time that Windows has had to deal with image format vulnerabilities. Last year, Microsoft closed a flaw in how its operating system handled JPEG images. Earlier this year, the company closed holes in how its operating system displayed the portable network graphics (PNG) format. Security firm eEye Digital Security, which found the latest flaw, even penned a Vogonesque ode to the PNG flaw.

If the latest flaw is used in an attack, the image could be part of a malicious Web site or sent in an e-mail, Microsoft said in the advisory. The patch is available for download or through Windows Update.