Microsoft to Release 7 Updates for October Bulletin

Microsoft announced its security bulletin for the security update for October on October 4, 2007, promising that there would be 7 updates for various products.

Microsoft planned to issue four significant bulletins for Outlook Express, Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word, and Windows Mail. Three other essential updates will be for SharePoint services, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, and Windows.

The updates scheduled for 9 October 2007 are a group of fixes that Microsoft has developed to handle certain issues such as compatibility, reliability, security, stability and performance, a Microsoft spokeswoman said answering some questions via e-mail. PCWorld published this in news on October 3, 2007. These fixes would add on improvements to some very common issues, however, they would be limited in scope, she said.

An interesting thing about the update is that it will quicken Vista start-up and lessen problems of its resumption, the latent situation that Microsoft attempted to repair with its August patches. Users of Vista have been complaining since April that it performed slow start-up and return from power-saving modes and shutdown.

Microsoft has rated the set of four updates as "critical", its highest ranking, and the remaining three as "important", the next rating.

The Word flaw is definitely a bug that parses files, said Andrew Storms, Director of security operations at nCircle Network Security Inc. COMPUTERWORLD published this in news on October 4, 2007. He further said that the Internet Explorer bug demonstrated the ineffectiveness of Vista's protections in aiding the browser, unlike what the software giant had hoped.

Out of the latest pack of four patches, the one with the most utilities was 5.4MB patch, which addresses many OS (Operating System) and hardware problems. Microsoft said that the patch also elongates the battery life of a laptop, handle problems of compatibility in certain anti-virus software, and enhances the stability of a Wi-Fi network connection.

The set of patches released on September was larger than the August set that contained 9 security bulletins to address 14 vulnerabilities, making the bulletin the second largest for 2007, according to Amol Sarwate, Manager of Vulnerability Research Lab at Qualys. InformationWeek published this on October 4, 2007.

Related article: Microsoft Patches Live OneCare to Tackle Quarantined E-Mails

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