Microsoft Prepares Six Security-Updates For Coming Week

As per the news of Computerworld.com on July 5, 2007, Microsoft has declared to release 6 security updates for fixing the vulnerabilities in Windows, .Net and Office.

July has become the 4th consecutive month of Microsoft posting patches for its new operating system, released in the market during January. In June 2007, Microsoft issued 6 security bulletins, which fixed 15 flaws, of which two were in Windows Vista.

Microsoft claims that 3 of the 6 bulletins that were due for release on July 10 were tagged 'critical' (it's the highest rating Microsoft gives to any flaw), whereas the other two were ranked 'important', and the last one was labeled 'moderate'. Flaws, which are settled by five out of the 6 updates, are categorized as remote-code executable, which indicates that the bugs belong to the most dangerous category.

In its alert, Microsoft has mentioned that important bugs in Publisher, Office and Windows XP Professional would remain the focus of two bulletins. One flaw, which is labeled as 'moderate', affects both Windows Vista and Vista x64.

The vulnerabilities rated as 'critical' cause the problems of remote code execution, which implies the hacker can easily control an infected machine by exploiting the flaw. The vulnerabilities labeled 'important' also caused remote code execution, which generally garners critical rating.

The vulnerability batch in June patched 12 critical holes, of which, 6 were in the browser of Microsoft Internet Explorer and the other 6 were present in Windows software. The security update rated 'important' fixed two flaws in Microsoft Office. The update with a 'moderate' rating fixed only one flaw in Windows.

In May 2007, 7 security bulletins were released by Microsoft, which could fix 19 bugs. All of the seven advisories were labeled 'critical'. Three of the security bulletins fixed bugs in Microsoft Office, with one each for Internet Explorer, Microsoft Exchange, and Windows. Two of the flaws infected Windows Vista's operating system and on the other hand 6 of them were the bugs present in several versions of the company's ubiquitous browser, Internet Explorer. And, 5 of the bugs were found in IE7.

Had Microsoft released all 6 updates, users would have received 41 bulletins in the H1 (first half) of this year, which comes out to be two more as compared to 39 in the initial 7 months of 2006.

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

» SPAMfighter News - 7/21/2007