12.03.09
Eye on Microsoft: Serenity Now, Security Later
Summary: Latest Microsoft insecurity news
• MS honeypot research sheds light on brute-force hacks
Many of these brute force attacks were reckoned to originate from bonnet networks of compromised Windows PCs.
• Holiday Season Microsoft Patch Tuesday
Yes, it’s almost time for Microsoft’s holiday edition of Patch Tuesday, December 8th. This is one set of gifts you shouldn’t wait to open and install. Microsoft announced that the patch presents would contain “six new security bulletins addressing 12 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office products.” And, the important news is that three of them have the maximum severity rating of Critical.
For my money, the most important of these is Microsoft Security Advisory 977981. This is the latest IE (Internet Explorer) bug, which could, in theory, be used to take over your Windows PCs.
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As for the rest of your December patch presents, Microsoft will be fixing both a Windows and Office problem that could be used to take your PC over with a remote code execution attack. You will need to re-boot your system after applying these patches.
So, if you’ve been good little Windows users, be sure to download and install these patches. If you haven’t been, well don’t be surprised if you get a lump of malware coal in your computers instead.
