Microsoft readies 11 fixes for Patch Tuesday

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Microsoft readies 11 fixes for Patch Tuesday


It’s almost that time again; time for Microsoft’s now infamous Patch Tuesday, when it issues its monthly security update.

The month’s line-up includes six patches for Windows, four for the Office suite, some of which are deemed “critical”, and one labeled “moderate” for its .NET program.

The updates include one to fix a bug in a Windows Shell component of the operating that has to do with the WebViewFolderIcon ActiveX control. The flaw could allow a hacker to gain control over a target PC and even install malicious software.

Microsoft has said that it’s not aware of any attacks using this flaw taking place despite security analysts SANS Internet Storm Center warning that attacks had indeed been spotted on the Internet.

The company had, however, issued an irregular security patch last week to plug a gap in Internet Explorer’s Vector Markup Language due to the critical nature of attacks that had been reported.

pocket-lint.co.uk

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The updates have been released:-
It's Patch Tuesday again today and Microsoft issued 11 security updates, fixing critical vulnerabilities in its Windows and Office software.(Thanks to Bob McMillan of IDG News Service for the info.)

Six of the updates are for Windows, including a patch for a nasty bug in the operating system's graphical user interface, which is currently being targeted by attackers. Four updates are for Office, and the final update is for the .Net framework, considered to be less severe than the worst of the Windows and Office bugs.

The patches were released as part of Microsoft's regular monthly security update cycle. Read Microsoft's security bulletins on these patches.

Six Critical Patches

Six of the 11 updates are rated critical, the most serious rating given by Microsoft.

The most publicized of these flaws is a bug in an ActiveX control called WebViewFolderIcon, which is used by the Windows' graphical user interface software. This vulnerability was first disclosed in July, but hackers began exploiting it late last month after exploit code taking advantage of it was added to the Metasploit hacking tool.

Microsoft Office has also been the target of a number of extremely limited attacks over the past few months, and today Microsoft issued four updates that addressed critical flaws in PowerPoint, Excel and Word, and the Office suite itself. All of these flaws could be exploited by an attacker to run unauthorized software on a victim's computer, Microsoft said.

The sixth critical update fixes two vulnerabilities in the XML (Extensible Markup Language) parser used by Windows.

No More XP Service Pack 1 Support

Today also marked the end of the line for Windows XP Service Pack 1, which will no longer be supported by Microsoft. Read Microsoft's advisory on this issue.

Hackers have been keeping Microsoft's Security Response Center busy this past month.

On Sept. 26, the company was forced to issue a rare, "out-of-cycle" security patch after criminals began exploiting a flaw in Internet Explorer's VML (Vector Markup Language) rendering engine.