Microsoft releases massive set of security updates
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Microsoft released 11 security updates Tuesday to&#160;fix critical flaws in its products, including a publicly known ActiveX bug that affects users of the Visual FoxPro database.In total, 17 individual software flaws were patched in the updates. Microsoft rates six updates as critical, meaning they should be installed as soon as possible, while the remaining five updates are considered &quot;important.&quot; Last month was an easier month on IT administrators, when Microsoft released just two updates.Microsoft surprised some by releasing one&#160;fewer update than expected. Last Thursday, the software vendor had said that it was&#160;readying a fix&#160;for critical VBScript and JScript flaws in Windows 2000, XP, and Windows Server 2003. That update wasn&#39;t included in this week&#39;s patches, but on Tuesday, Microsoft wouldn&#39;t confirm that it had actually dropped the update because &quot;this could put customers at risk,&quot; according a spokeswoman for the company&#39;s public relations agency.Security experts said Tuesday that the MS08-010 update, which fixes four bugs in Internet Explorer, should take top priority this week. &quot;There are four vulnerabilities within that particular patch and all of them are remote-code executable,&quot; said Jonathan Bitle, director of technical account management with Qualys.&quot;The way we&#39;re looking at it, our prioritization would put MS08-010 at the top, followed by MS08-007,&quot; said Don Leatham, director of solutions and strategy with Lumension Security.MS08-010 fixes a publicly disclosed ActiveX bug that affects Visual FoxPro users. Although hackers have already posted code showing how to exploit this vulnerability, the buggy ActiveX control is not included in Internet Explorer 7&#39;s default list of controls, so the flaw should not affect most users.The MS08-007 update fixes a critical flaw in the Windows XP and Vista WebDAV redirector software. WebDAV is a Web-based document sharing protocol. The flaw is rated important for Windows Server 2003 users.Microsoft&#39;s Office products are also a major source of patches this month. Tuesday&#39;s updates include critical fixes for Microsoft Word, Office Publisher, and Office itself. There is also a critical update for Windows&#39; Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) Automation software. The remaining updates, rated important, are for Active Directory, the Vista TCP/IP stack, the Microsoft Works file converter, and two bugs in the Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server.The Patch Tuesday updates show that client-side bugs continue to be a much higher risk than server-side vulnerabilities, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations with nCircle. &quot;One would have assumed that the IIS and Active Directory vulnerabilities would have been the most serious because they stand at the core of an enterprise and provide more critical services,&quot; he said via instant message. &quot;But with this month&#39;s patches, the hacker&#39;s best bet is to take advantage of the client-side attacks.&quot;
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Microsoft Corp. released two security fixes Tuesday that carry its most severe threat rating, including one that applies even to computers that have downloaded the company's massive security update for the Windows XP operating system.
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Microsoft Corp. today released just two security updates that patch three vulnerabilities in Windows, with just one of the three flaws rated critical.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft plans to release 13 sets of security patches next Tuesday fixing critical vulnerabilities in a number of its products, including the company's new security software. The bulk of the patches will fix flaws in the Windows operating system and Office, Microsoft said in a statement published Thursday on its Web site. Five of the updates will be for Windows, and two of them will be for Office. Microsoft also plans to release one less-critical update that addresses flaws in both Windows and Office. The patches will be released as part of Microsoft's monthly cycle of security updates. There will also be patches for Microsoft's Step-by-Step Interactive Training andÂ Microsoft Data Access Components and an update that covers both Windows and Visual Studio. Finally, Microsoft will also publish an update that patches critical flaws in its Windows Live OneCare, Antigen, Windows Defender, and ForeFront security software. The Office patches have been anticipated as online criminals have been exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities in Word and Excel for several months now. These attacks, which are occurring on a limited scale according to Microsoft, try to trick the victim into opening a maliciously coded Office attachment in order to compromise the PC.
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Microsoft yesterday released 10 new security bulletins to fix multiple components in its Windows operating system and applications.
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Though Microsoft Corp.'s new security update package is all about protecting systems from worms, viruses and spyware, it can't do much about what's already on computers - and that could pose a problem.    The company is warning users of the Windows XP operating system to check for spyware before downloading the free massive security update, called Service Pack 2...
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Microsoft Corp.  on  Tuesday released three security patches to fix holes in its  Windows and Office software and warned one of the  vulnerabilities was "critical" because it could allow an  attacker to take over a user's computer.
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Microsoft Corp. has released a major update to its server operating system designed to make the product more stable and secure.
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Microsoft Corp. says it has distributed about 106 million copies of its major security update for the Windows XP operating system.
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Microsoft Corp. will release six groups of security patches next week including three critical updates for Windows and Excel users.
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Monthly security updates include IE, Windows Media, and Visual Studio fixes.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft will release six sets of security patches next Tuesday, four of which will fix critical flaws in the Windows operating system.
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Microsoft plans to issue two security updates for its Windows operating system products next Tuesday as part of its regular software patch cycle.The updates were pre-announced Thursday morning on Microsoft&#39;s Web site in order to give IT staffers a sense of how busy they will be next week installing the patches.One of the updates is considered critical for Windows Vista and XP users because the flaw it fixes could be used by attackers to install unauthorized software on a victim&#39;s computer. This update is rated important for Windows Server 2003 users and considered moderate for Windows 2000 users.The second update, rated important for all Windows users, could allow an attacker to run software with a higher level of privilege on a system than would normally be allowed.Microsoft did not provide any technical details on the updates.With just two updates scheduled, January will be a light month by Microsoft&#39;s standards. In 2007 the company shipped 69 software updates, an average of just under six per month.
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Microsoft issued 11 security bulletins on Patch Tuesday covering a total of 17 vulnerabilities, 10 of them critical. The 11 patches address the Windows operating system, the Internet Explorer Web browser, Microsoft Office and other programs.
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'Secure Development Lifecycle' only goes so far Microsoft on Tuesday issued two security updates, one of them rated critical that fixes nasty bugs in Windows Vista that could allow an attacker to gain complete control over a user's machine.â¦
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Microsoft will release six security updates for Windows and Visual Studio next week.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft has released its monthly set of security patches , fixing problems in Windows, Internet Explorer and in the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) software used for secure Web browsing. In total, Microsoft released six sets of patches, called updates, fixing 15 flaws in its products. Four of these updates are rated critical and administrators should patch them as soon as possible, security experts said Tuesday. Many of the flaws that Microsoft patched on Tuesday can be exploited via the Web. In particular the MS07-033 update, which fixes bugs in Internet Explorer and MS07-031 , which addresses a critical flaw in the SSL libraries used by Windows. The SSL flaw is particularly interesting because it affects users who are visiting supposedly trustworthy Web sites, and because it could also affect non-Microsoft browsers like Firefox and Opera, said Amol Sarwate, manager of Qualys, Inc.'s vulnerability research lab. "It will affect all the browsers that call the libraries that are in the Windows operating system," he said. Although Microsoft warned that this flaw could be used by attackers to run unauthorized software on the victim's computer, this would be hard to do. "Attempts to exploit this vulnerability would most likely result in the Internet Web browser or application exiting," Microsoft wrote in its MS07-031 bulletin. "The system would not be able to connect to Web sites or resources using SSL ... until a restart of the system." The two other critical updates are MS07-035 , which fixes a bug in the core Windows operating system's Win32 API (application programming interface), and MS07-034 , which fixes bugs in Outlook Express and Windows Mail. Because MS07-035 could be exploited via the Web, it should also be patched as soon as possible, Sarwate said. The other updates released Tuesday fix less-critical flaws in Windows Vista and Microsoft's Visio drawing software. The Vista update is noteworthy because it marks the first time that Microsoft has patched a flaw that was introduced in the Vista operating system, Sarwate said. Previous Vista patches have repaired "legacy" code that was written for earlier versions of Windows, and then reused in Vista. But the MS07-032 update applies to Vista only. This flaw, rated "moderate" by Microsoft, could allow an attacker to gain unauthorized access to information such as administrative passwords stored within Windows.