Microsoft February 09 Patch Tuesday: Four Security Holes
Tomorrow, the 10th of February 2009 will mark the second Tuesday of the month, and as always Microsoft is getting ready to release several patches for their Windows operating system. From this month’s Patch Tuesday you can expect to get a fix for a total of 4 security vulnerabilities (2 of which deemed as “critical” and the other 2 “important”). You are very well advised to patch your OS and keep it up-to-date if you care about the issue of security.
The vulnerabilities mentioned above affect several software programs and platforms: Internet Explorer (critical), Microsoft SQL (important), Microsoft Office (important), and Microsoft Exchange Software (critical). Microsoft will also provide an update for the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, just as they do every month. There’s nothing new in the disclosure policy either:
“As always, we’ll be holding the February edition of the monthly security bulletin webcast on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2009 at 11 a.m., Pacific Standard Time. We will review this month’s release and take your questions live on-air with answers from our panel of experts. As a friendly reminder, if you can’t make the live webcast, you can listen to it on-demand as well at the same URL. In addition, we’ll also be posting the text of the questions and answers from each month’s webcast. You can register for the webcast here.”
Just as a little reminder, Microsoft uses a four tier security rating system: low, moderate, important and critical. An important security vulnerability means that that someone with malicious intent could exploit it and compromise the confidentiality, availability or integrity of your data or processing resources. A critical vulnerability has the potential of aiding in spreading an internet worm (requires no user interference, so you might not even be aware your system has been compromised).
The vulnerabilities mentioned above affect several software programs and platforms: Internet Explorer (critical), Microsoft SQL (important), Microsoft Office (important), and Microsoft Exchange Software (critical). Microsoft will also provide an update for the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, just as they do every month. There’s nothing new in the disclosure policy either:
“As always, we’ll be holding the February edition of the monthly security bulletin webcast on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2009 at 11 a.m., Pacific Standard Time. We will review this month’s release and take your questions live on-air with answers from our panel of experts. As a friendly reminder, if you can’t make the live webcast, you can listen to it on-demand as well at the same URL. In addition, we’ll also be posting the text of the questions and answers from each month’s webcast. You can register for the webcast here.”
Just as a little reminder, Microsoft uses a four tier security rating system: low, moderate, important and critical. An important security vulnerability means that that someone with malicious intent could exploit it and compromise the confidentiality, availability or integrity of your data or processing resources. A critical vulnerability has the potential of aiding in spreading an internet worm (requires no user interference, so you might not even be aware your system has been compromised).
