Archive for December 10th, 2006

New patches from Microsoft

Sunday, December 10th, 2006

Microsoft will launch on Tuesday six security patches, at least two of these being considered critical. On the list, however is not specified a patch for a security problem recently discovered in Word, as Office will not get any support this time.

With the exception of one patch, all fixes take care of different problems of Windows, one of these being critical. The sixth patch is a critical fix for Microsoft Visual Studio.

Although Microsoft never reveals the nature of the patches to protect his users, sometimes the reported vulnerabilities can give clues about the company’s changes. For instance, the Visual Studio deficiency could be linked to an exploit initially discovered at the beginning of November.

The vulnerability exposed users to the risk of arbitrarily code being executed from distance, according to experts.

It will not be fixed however a zero-day exploit of a Word deficiency. Microsoft announced that is working to repair the new vulnerability, but it seems that the new exploit was discovered too late to launch a patch for it.

As an addition to the security patches, Microsoft also intends to launch an updated version of Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool.

Besides the security patches, Microsoft will also launch a series of patches that are not related to security. Four high priority updates will be launched through Windows Update, and another 10 will be launched through Windows Update, has announced Microsoft.