Computer Tips -Tech Info

Tag: microsoft update

  • Microsoft Releasing out of Cycle Patch for Internet Explorer Exploit

    Take a look at the official announcement. They’ve moved outside the usual update cycle for this one. VERY good move Microsoft to get this patch in before the holidays as it looks as though there’s been a spike in the use of this particular exploit and with people doing a lot of home pc browsing over the next two weeks, hopefully they can have a patched Internet Explorer to browse with. These are one more good reason to have an alternative browser such as firefox installed “just in case”. That’s not to say that Firefox is immune to all such security issues, but it is targeted less frequently and perhaps most importantly by DIFFERENT things than Explorer is targeted by. (I should note that version 3.0.5 of firefox is out to address it’s own list of issues.)

    By the way, this Internet Explorer vulnerability is listed as critical for Internet Explorer 5.01 on NT SP4, for Internet Explorer 6 on NT SP4 as well as pretty much every combination of Internet Explorer 6 or Explorer 7 on XP, Server 2003, Vista or Server 2008 AND those using Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 users are encouraged to update to a new release as well. In other words IF you use any currently supported version of Internet Explorer on any currently supported version of Windows you need to make sure this update installs.

  • Microsoft October 2006 patch Tuesday

    The first thing I should mention is that this months update from Microsoft is the last for XP SP1 users should plan a migration path to SP2 to keep getting updates to XP. Multiple vulnerabilities this month have been patched in Office There are 4 advisories, but a total of 15 issues covered by those four. Powerpoint, Excel, Word and Office/Publisher there are a variety of exploits, some public (like the powerpoint) others that were privately reported. Also, Incidents.org gives a nice summary of the advisories and the severity of each (urgency of updating.) The setslice vulnerability is patched in this batch by the way.

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  • Microsoft updates are out for July

    and they affect no fewer than 18 issues in Office and Windows. 13 issues are tagged as critical, others as important. They are all bundled into 7 update downloads. 8 vulnerabilities within Excel have been addressed in all of this. Office 2000 users will have to manually update (Office XP/2003 updates can be brought in through Microsoft Update.) It looks like the flaw I found most interesting was a remote code execution vulnerability in the DHCP client… .(Affects 2000/xp and 2003).

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  • Big Windows June update day

    Updates for Windows for the month of June are out today and it looks like some list! 12 updates covering 20 or more vulnerabilities. MANY of these are tagged as critical. (Critical vulnerabilities are considered remotely exploited or with little (or no) user interaction.) Sans has a good listing of the advisories. This month it is a bit much to track in one big whallop… but I’ll try to give a summary here.

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