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Microsoft's August Patches Will Keep IT Admins Busy
Posted by MOHAMED NIAMATH
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10:54 AM
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microsoft
Microsoft will issue 13 security bulletins with 34 vulnerabilities on Patch Tuesday, matching its previous record. The Patch Tuesday flood fixes Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, Microsoft Works, and Silverlight. Meantime, Symantec's admission of a year-long worm attack could mean that antivirus and traditional defenses are obsolete.
Microsoft on Tuesday will serve up a flood of security Relevant Products/Services bulletins in its monthly patch update. The patches will address 34 individual vulnerabilities, including eight critical and six important fixes, in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, Silverlight and SQL.
On the Windows front, the fixes target Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and 2008, and Windows Server 2008 release 2. Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 will also be patched.
In terms of productivity software, Office XP Service Pack 3, Office 2004 and 2008 for Mac, Office Word Viewer, Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, 2007 File Formats Service Pack 2, and Microsoft Works 9 will see fixes. Finally, bugs in Silverlight 2 and 3 will be eradicated with the August patch.
"This will be the most bulletins we have ever released in a month. We have released 13 bulletins on a couple of occasions," said Angela Gunn, security response communications manager at Microsoft. "However, in total CVE [common vulnerabilities and exposures] count, this release ties with June 2010, so there's no new record there."
The Symantec Factor
With more than half of Tuesday's patches rated critical, requiring a restart and impacting most of the Microsoft platform Relevant Products/Services, Paul Henry, a security analyst for Lumension, said IT Relevant Products/Services admins will have to put off any last-ditch effort to enjoy the end of summer.
"While it is concerning to deal with the high volume of critical patches, even more concerning is the recent Stuxnet revelation by Symantec, saying that they've identified an early version of the worm that was created in June 2009, and that the malicious software was then made much more sophisticated in the early part of 2010," Henry said.
Symantec also said its critical infrastructure Relevant Products/Services and enterprise Relevant Products/Services networks were exposed to the LNK vulnerability and were targeted for more than a year. Symantec admitted the company did not have a clue from its traditional defenses.
"We have to assume that having just now uncovered the Stuxnet worm -- being called the most sophisticated, targeted attack we have seen so far -- speaks volumes to now-insufficient antivirus efforts and further validates that these traditional means of protection Relevant Products/Services are obsolete," Henry said. "It is time organizations rethink the way they are doing things. It is imperative users supplement their existing solutions with application whitelisting to defend against malware."
Drive-By Exploits?
In light of the Symantec revelation, Henry said it's equally important to note that Microsoft makes no mention of the emergency patch issued earlier this week around Windows XP Service Pack 2 that will continue to affect XP users.
Meanwhile, with such a large number of bulletins, Josh Abraham is curious to see how many will be turned into reliable exploits. "Several of the Windows OS bulletins will likely lead to drive-by-based attacks," said Abraham, security researcher for Rapid7. "The IE bulletin will probably provide similar types of attacks. I don't foresee more than two or three immediate exploits based on the number of critical bulletins."
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Microsoft on Tuesday will serve up a flood of security Relevant Products/Services bulletins in its monthly patch update. The patches will address 34 individual vulnerabilities, including eight critical and six important fixes, in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, Silverlight and SQL.
On the Windows front, the fixes target Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and 2008, and Windows Server 2008 release 2. Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 will also be patched.
In terms of productivity software, Office XP Service Pack 3, Office 2004 and 2008 for Mac, Office Word Viewer, Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, 2007 File Formats Service Pack 2, and Microsoft Works 9 will see fixes. Finally, bugs in Silverlight 2 and 3 will be eradicated with the August patch.
"This will be the most bulletins we have ever released in a month. We have released 13 bulletins on a couple of occasions," said Angela Gunn, security response communications manager at Microsoft. "However, in total CVE [common vulnerabilities and exposures] count, this release ties with June 2010, so there's no new record there."
The Symantec Factor
With more than half of Tuesday's patches rated critical, requiring a restart and impacting most of the Microsoft platform Relevant Products/Services, Paul Henry, a security analyst for Lumension, said IT Relevant Products/Services admins will have to put off any last-ditch effort to enjoy the end of summer.
"While it is concerning to deal with the high volume of critical patches, even more concerning is the recent Stuxnet revelation by Symantec, saying that they've identified an early version of the worm that was created in June 2009, and that the malicious software was then made much more sophisticated in the early part of 2010," Henry said.
Symantec also said its critical infrastructure Relevant Products/Services and enterprise Relevant Products/Services networks were exposed to the LNK vulnerability and were targeted for more than a year. Symantec admitted the company did not have a clue from its traditional defenses.
"We have to assume that having just now uncovered the Stuxnet worm -- being called the most sophisticated, targeted attack we have seen so far -- speaks volumes to now-insufficient antivirus efforts and further validates that these traditional means of protection Relevant Products/Services are obsolete," Henry said. "It is time organizations rethink the way they are doing things. It is imperative users supplement their existing solutions with application whitelisting to defend against malware."
Drive-By Exploits?
In light of the Symantec revelation, Henry said it's equally important to note that Microsoft makes no mention of the emergency patch issued earlier this week around Windows XP Service Pack 2 that will continue to affect XP users.
Meanwhile, with such a large number of bulletins, Josh Abraham is curious to see how many will be turned into reliable exploits. "Several of the Windows OS bulletins will likely lead to drive-by-based attacks," said Abraham, security researcher for Rapid7. "The IE bulletin will probably provide similar types of attacks. I don't foresee more than two or three immediate exploits based on the number of critical bulletins."
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