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Microsoft Black Tuesday: Microsoft Fixes Google researcher's zero
day
13 July, 2010 -- Today, Microsoft released four security
bulletins for July's
Patch Day, fixing two flaws in Windows, and two in Office. They
rate three of the four bulletins as Critical. However, even the
Important bulletin fixes an Outlook flaw that poses a significant
risk. You should download, test and install all of these patches as
quickly as possible.
As I had
hoped, Microsoft did patch the zero day Windows Help and Support
Center vulnerability that a Google researcher had disclosed without
giving Microsoft time to patch. Since attackers are already
exploiting this public vulnerability in the wild, you will probably
want to apply this update first. I have expressed my discontent
with how the Google researcher disclosed this flaw, but for a slightly
different opinion, feel free to read this Threat
Post write-up about the incident. While the Help and Support Center
flaw will probably get all the media attention today, the other
Critical updates fix vulnerabilities that are just as serious. So, I recommend
you install those updates just as quickly. With only four patches
(fixing five actual vulnerabilities), you shouldn't have much trouble
getting through today's Patch Day.
You can learn more about these security bulletins from the tables
provided in Microsoft's
Bulletin Summary for July. Microsoft's tables (arranged in
order of severity) link directly to this month's bulletins and patches.
Expand the "Affected Software and Download Location" section of the
Summary to find a valuable table that will help you develop your own
deployment strategy.
LiveSecurity and LiveSecurity Informer subscribers will
receive more detailed information about these flaws, and how to
fix them, in alerts
we're working on right now. -- Corey Nachreiner,
CISSP
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