Stan Beer
Saturday, 05 August 2006 10:03
Business IT -
Security
It seems to be a case of another second Tuesday of the month another dozen patches for Microsoft software. According to the software giant, we can expect to see another twelve patches released for its monthly Patch Tuesday in August.
According to Microsoft, 10 of the patches involve vulnerabilities in
the Windows operating system, while two address problems with Office,
including a PowerPoint hole that was identified in July.
It is not clear how many of the patches fall into the highest severity
rating of critical, However, reports say that at least two patches
spanning the Windows and Office flaws are considered critical, which
means they can be exploited by hackers without users doing anything.
Critical flaws are those that can be exploited by attackers to run unauthorized code on a PC without any user action.
The patches, some of which will require a restart, will be released on
Aug. 8 as part of Microsoft’s regularly scheduled monthly security
update, which security researchers call "Patch Tuesday." Microsoft’s
advance note on the updates can be found here.
On August Patch Tuesday Microsoft will also release an update to its Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool.
The high occurrence of monthly patches appears to be the norm nowadays
for Microsoft. In July, the software company issued seven patches, five
of which were critical, while in June Microsoft issued 12 patches,
eight of which were deemed critical.
It appears that new holes are being identified in Microsoft software
faster than the company can patch them. Just days after July Patch
Tuesday, a critical vulnerability was found in PowerPoint.