Patch Tuesday brings 13 fixes
The latest Patch Tuesday release from Microsoft could prove a headache for sysadmins, with 13 updates planned.
As reported over on ARN, this month's Patch Tuesday rollout will come with thirteen fixes for flaws in Microsoft's Windows and Office products, with five of those for vulnerabilities the company counts as "Critical" on its tiered scoring system. A further eight of the updates are rated "Important," the next level down in the scoring system.
The vast majority of the updates - eleven, to be precise - are aimed at fixing issues with Microsoft's Windows operating system, with just two looking to fix problems in Office XP and Office 2003 for Windows and Office 2004 for Mac OS.
Interestingly, five of the updates affect the company's latest iteration of the Windows platform - the consumer Windows 7 and the server-side Windows Server 2008 R2 - despite claims from Microsoft that its latest versions are the most secure yet.
Such claims are given meat, however, by the news that Windows XP users will have to apply an additional three updates - for a total of eight - in order to ensure they are fully protected. Any users still running Windows 2000 will need nine of the eleven Windows updates.
Interestingly, at least one of the patches is treated differently between Windows Vista and Windows 7, despite their shared code base: the "Bulletin 1" patch is rated as Critical importance for Windows XP, downrated to Important for Windows Vista, but returns to Critical for Windows 7 - despite Windows 7 having far more in common code-wise with Vista than XP.
A full list of the issues resolved by this latest round of patches can be found on the Microsoft Security Response Center blog.
Are you worried about the headaches a bumper thirteen-patch month might cause, or are you just pleased to see some of the more egregious security flaws in Windows getting patched at last? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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13 Comments
Discuss in the forums Replyload the ones I want for xp. I stopped using automatic updates because ms was installing updates
without my approval the sneaky a$$es !!
can't you just go on advanced and select the ones you want to install?
at the time I had autoupdates enabled so that I had to approve the updates before they were
installed, it didn't matter I found that upon shutting down updates were being installed then windows
would shut down. It wasn't just me I found that this was happening to other people as well. you
can't let ms take total control of your pc.!!
Use MacOS or Linux ;)
You can't let Apple take total controls of your PC software & hardware!!!!! Especially not Steve Jobs!!!! But I think Linus Torvald is okay!!!!!! ;-P
As far as I know, the most important / critical patches that will keep your PC "safe & secure" are automatically applied when auto updates is switched on, without any request for additional permission and I believe is there to give you a greater degree of protection.
I also remember reading an article a couple of years ago stating that Microsoft were supposedly even giving the most essential security updates even to pirated copies of Windows to help reduce the effects that viruses and malware have.
As far as MS updating without permission in the case of critical updates, I can see the reasoning in reducing malware, but I believe they pushed genuine advantage as a security update as well when that came out. Do we want things like that installed without our permission?
That's just plain false. OSX asks permission before installing any patch just like windows, and you can choose individual patches to update or ignore. You should check you facts before posting about an OS you probably don't even use. The thing about hardware is kind of true, but it doesn't have much to do with software updates does it?
you're quite mistaken according to Apple EULA, it's Steve computer he's just letting you use it.