News

Microsoft Planning Major Security Patch for Tuesday

• By Jabulani Leffall
• 04/08/2011

Last month's Windows security update was light, but this month's update will be more substantial, according to an advance notice from Microsoft.

The company has announced that it will release 17 patches on Tuesday in its monthly security update, with nine fixes deemed "critical" and eight considered "important." Fixing remote code execution (RCE) attack risks dominates April's release -- 15 of the 17 security bulletins address those issues. Two security bulletins point to information disclosure and elevation-of-privilege threats.

"No matter how you look at it, it's ugly," said Paul Henry, forensic and security analyst at Lumension. "We're well into a new year and things have not improved. In fact, they've gotten worse."

Critical Fixes

The first critical security bulletin appears to be the long-awaited cumulative fix for Internet Explorer. It will address every supported Windows operating system and covers IE versions 6, 7, and 8.

The remaining eight critical security bulletins are all Windows OS-level fixes with RCE exploit risks. Critical security bulletin No. 6 also includes a fix for Microsoft Office.

Important Fixes

The important security bulletins are an assortment of updates that affect a variety of programs, including Office and development tools, along with Windows. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are all in the patch crosshairs for the month of April.

All 17 updates may require restarts. With the growth of vulnerabilities and patches, it may be helpful to some Windows IT pros to check out the newly released Microsoft Security Update Guide. It's an aid for keeping track of patches and evaluating threat risks.

The recent expansion in the number of Microsoft's security bulletins comes from a spike in vulnerabilities affecting third-party software designed to run on Windows or that users with Windows systems download, Henry explained.

"All of this is further evidence that our methods of securing our systems just aren't up to par," Henry said. "Again and again, Microsoft falls victim to third-party software causing a major breach. Everyone blames Microsoft month after month for patching issues, but this is not just a Microsoft issue. Unless we're going to get busy patching this garbage we're installing on our systems, it's going to continue to be an issue."

In the meantime, administrators can check out this Knowledge Base article for information about nonsecurity updates being pushed out via Windows Update, Microsoft Update, and Windows Server Update Services.