Security threats Toolkit

Story: Microsoft to fix zero-day SMB, IIS holes

• 
• 

BUSY PATCH TUESDAY!!

Bulletin 5 presents an increased threat for drive-by malware because it concerns the most current versions of IE - versions 7 and 8 - on multiple operating system platforms making this vulnerability a prime target for web-born malware writers and malicious web operators.

Of the batch, Bulletin 12, raises a red flag. Labelled as critical, it affects a large number of operating systems, core services and applications. Given its prevalence, it is most likely a low level vulnerability shared within the operating system itself that needs to be fixed. If exploited, it could allow the propagation of an Internet worm without user action. Before deploying this patch into production environments, it is essential that IT administrators test it vigorously to ensure services are not impacted by unexpected results.

Organisations should also pay close attention to the details listed in Bulletins 7 and 9, two important vulnerabilities, to determine how critical they are within their business environments. Vulnerabilities involving spoofing and elevation of privilege should raise an alarm for IT administrators as they can potentially have a big impact on their ability to verify trusted destinations and control user privileges within their organisations – two conceptual things that IT never wants to lose control over.

In addition to these four bulletins, all of the critical vulnerabilities are labelled as remote code execution, which require a restart and are across a broad variety of Windows platforms and applications.

• 
• 

• 
• 
• 

Full Talkback thread