Microsoft releases seven &#39;critical&#39; security patches
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Microsoft has issued ten new software security patches, seven of which are deemed so &#39;critical&#39; that it is advising firms to download them immediately.
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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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Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday released 10 software security patches for its products, including seven it deemed critical and that could allow remote attackers to take control of systems running the company's software.
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Software giant Microsoft on Tuesday announced 10 security advisories, seven of them critical, urging consumers to patch 21 new flaws in its software products.
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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. The software will be released as part of Microsoft's regular monthly security release, known informally as "Patch Tuesday." Microsoft is also planning less critical updates for Visio and Windows Vista, the company said in a note, published Thursday. Microsoft considers an update critical when the flaw could be used by an attacker to remotely run unauthorized software on the victim's machine, theoretically leading to the propagation of an Internet worm. This month, Microsoft has revealed a few more details on the upcoming patches than it has in the past. That's part ofÂ a new plan to help IT administratorsÂ better prepare for Patch Tuesday by letting them know exactly what versions of Microsoft's products will be affected by the updates. Last month, Microsoft released seven groups of patches on Patch Tuesday.
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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 will release five sets of security patches next Tuesday, including a critical update for users of Windows 2000,Â the company saidÂ Thursday. With the remaining four security updates rated as "important" by Microsoft, this latest round of patches appears to be less worrisome than the August updates. Last month,Â Microsoft released nine updates, six of which were rated critical. Microsoft rates its bug fixes as critical when attackers can exploit the flaws without requiring any user action. Also set to be patched this month are Visual Studio, Windows Services for Unix, SharePoint Services, and the Windows Live and MSN Messenger software. Microsoft releases its security patches on the second Tuesday of each month, generally around 11 a.m., Pacific time. With this latest rounds of patches, Microsoft will have released 55 updates in 2007, the same number it had released by September of last year.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft on Tuesday issued six security updates for Windows, Office, and .Net Framework, patching a total of 11 vulnerabilities -- five of them rated critical. The most serious of the batch is MS07-039, said security analysts who, unlike lastÂ  month, had no trouble naming that critical update as the one which should beÂ  patched first. "By far, this is the top of the list this month," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security Inc. MS07-039 patches a pair of bugs in Active Directory in Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003, the two supported server editions of Microsoft's operating system. The most dangerous of the two is a vulnerability in the way Active Directory validates an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) request.Â  According to Microsoft's write-up, "an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system." "Definitely at the top of today's list," agreed David Dewey, a researcher with IBM Internet Security Systems' X-Force team. "It's definitely exploitable." Dewey should know, since it was a colleague at ISS, Neel Mehta, who discovered the flaw last summer. "Neel's created proof-of-concept code in-house during the time we worked on this with Microsoft," said Dewey. "It would certainly be worth the effort" to exploit this, added Storms. "Active Directory is in the center of every Windows network. There's a lot in there, including the group policy objects that set security -- and everything about every user." Unlike most vulnerabilities, the Active Directory bug can be exploited without any user interaction, and on Windows 2000 Server, the older of the two operating systems, it can be attacked by an anonymous user. Although Windows Server 2003 may look safer at first glance -- an attacker must have valid credentials to exploit the bug on that edition -- looks can be deceiving, said Tom Cross, another X-Force researcher. "In this case, the authentication requirements become less important," said Cross. "Anyone on the network -- an employee, for example -- would by definition have credentials." Worse, said Cross, is that outside attackers could exploit this without a lot of trouble by bundling an MS07-039 exploit with a multi-strike attack that figures on compromising some fraction of enterprise laptops while they're outside the network. Once back inside the enterprise's perimeter, the Active Directory exploit could fire up -- using the credentials of the hijacked notebook -- to grab systems running the supposedly more secure Windows Server 2003. Two of the remaining five bulletins were pegged "critical" by Microsoft, while another two were marked "important." The final update was tagged as "moderate." MS07-036, which patches three vulnerabilities, two of them judged critical and oneÂ  of them a zero-day flaw already out in public, repairs bugs in Excel 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007. Similar vulnerabilities in other Microsoft Office document formats, including those in Word and PowerPoint, have been used by attackers to slip malicious code into corporations. Some of these attacks have been so narrowly targeted that they're launched against just one user at one company. What's interesting about this update, said a Symantec researcher in an e-mail, is that Microsoft got it wrong back in February when it downplayed the initial report of the Excel threat. Then, Symantec's DeepSight threat network analysts reported Excel 2003 was susceptible to a denial-of-service bug which, if exploited, could crash the program. Four months ago, Microsoft denied that the bugs were actually vulnerabilities. "Microsoft has completed its investigation of new public reports of possibleÂ  vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Excel 2003 [and] hasÂ  confirmed that these are not product vulnerabilities," a spokeswoman toldÂ  Computerworld at the time. "They are issues that can cause the application to become unresponsive. Users can restart the application," she said. "[Today's] bulletin includes a fix for a previously disclosed denial-of-service issue from February 2007 which is now billed as having the potential for remote code execution," noted Oliver Friedrichs, director of Symantec's security response group. As Friedrichs pointed out, Microsoft characterized all three bugs patched by MS07-036 as having a "remote code execution" impact, meaning that hackers couldÂ  inject their own malware into a PC after exploiting the Excel flaws. The third critical update, MS07-040, plugs three holes in the .Net Framework, the primary Windows runtime environment called on by developers. Notably, all three vulnerabilities were previewed during a sneak peek at the Syscan'07 security conference last week in Singapore. But the patches may be a ton of trouble to corporate IT managers, said Storms, because the .Net Framework is so widely used by corporate developers of in-house software. "Not only will [companies] have to run QA on the patches, they'll have to run QA on the code that runs on .Net," said Storms. The fixes in MS07-040 apply to all but Version 3.x of .Net Framework, adding additional complexity to in-enterprise application testing. Of the remaining security updates, one fixes a flaw in Publisher 2007, another patches Internet Information Services 5.1 on Windows XP Professional SP2, and the thirdÂ  quashes a bug in Windows Vista's bundled firewall. That last, although rated "moderate," second-from-the-bottom in Microsoft's four-step severity rating system, is worth some reflection, said Symantec's Friedrichs. "Microsoft's decision to rewrite the Windows network stack and its accompanying firewall [for Vista] continues to have long-term security implications," Friedrichs said. "A network stack can take decades of heavy scrutiny in order to become battle hardened. As an operating system's first line of defense, its quality is directly related to its ability to withstand attack." On its own, added Friedrichs, the firewall bug isn't a big deal; the result of an exploit is that the attacker can "see" the system when it should actually be completely invisible to outside probes. "[But] if this logic flaw were combined with a vulnerability in one of the exposed services, this could have more serious, widespread implications." As usual, Microsoft's monthly updates have been posted to Microsoft Update and Windows Update services, and they can also be retrieved through Windows Server Update Services (WSUS).
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Microsoft Corp.  issued  six "critical" security patches on Tuesday to fix flaws in its  software products that the company warned could allow attackers  to take control of a user's computer.
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In sharp contrast to last month&#39;s barrage of critical patches, Microsoft has offered up just one &quot;important&quot; fix for users to implement in its scheduled round of security updates for November.
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.NET, Active Directory and Excel flaws patched up Microsoft's latest Patch Tuesday update brought six patches, three of which Redmond described as critical fixes.â¦
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Microsoft has released its last regular security update of the year which includes five new patches, all rated &#39;important&#39;, and the reissue of a &#39;critical&#39; patch after extensive revisions.
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SEATTLE - Microsoft has warned of seven newly found flaws in its software that could allow an attacker to steal data and take over a personal computer running the Windows operating system.
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SEATTLE -- Microsoft released a patch for its latest &quot;critical&quot; rated security flaw affecting its Windows, Office and developer tools software programs, the company said Tuesday.
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'Black Tuesday' brings four critical fixes Microsoft's June Patch Tuesday brought six security updates - four of which earn the dreaded rating of critical.â¦
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Well, it&#39;s &quot;Patch Day Tuesday&quot; again, and Microsoft just released another raft of security bulletins. We got ten bulletins this time, but that amounts to something upwind of 20 separate vulnerabilities