Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Finally Admits Numbers of Vulnerabilities It Reports Are Fake

Microsoft lies



Summary: Mike Reavey, the director of the Microsoft Security Response Center, admits that Microsoft is silently patching vulnerabilities without ever reporting the problem

IT'S official. Microsoft is a liar. Again. Now there is even admission from Microsoft, confirming an issue which we first raised some weeks ago. Whenever Microsoft says it patches x number of flaws with y number of patches/bulletins, Microsoft ought to be assumed to be lying. Microsoft's silent patching is a subject we have been covering for years and it helps explain why one in two Windows PCs is believed to be a zombie PC, despite Microsoft's claims that all of its flaws are being addressed. All those fake comparisons against platforms like Red Hat Enterprise Linux (where Microsoft stacks up and aggregates numbers of flaws) can be thrown into the wastebasket. If convincing proof is needed, here it is. Microsoft first tried to spin it (for weeks) and now it gives up and tells the truth.



Microsoft Official Admits to Quiet Security Patching



Microsoft doesn't report all security vulnerabilities that it fixes in its software. Bug comparisons between vendors therefore paint an incorrect picture.

"We don't document every issue found," Mike Reavey, director of the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), said at a meeting with reporters at the company's corporate headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Microsoft will issue a Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) number to a vulnerability for flaws that share the same severity, have an attack vector and a workaround. If several flaws share all the same properties, they will not be reported separately, Reavey said.

The nondisclosure of fixes was brought to light early this month by a company called Core Security Technologies. After studying the Microsoft patches MS10-024 and MS10-028, it noticed three silent fixes. Security bulletin MS10-028 addressed a flaw that would expose a user of Microsoft Visio to a buffer overflow attack, which would allow an attacker to take over control of the system.


Finally. Thanks for the honesty. So how much damage has been caused by Microsoft's lies so far. Microsoft has been denying this for years, but not exactly denying, either. It was spinning and avoiding the actual question. It's the art of lying without practically lying, just evading. Adobe is at least honest about its proprietary software being insecure garbage. As far as we are aware, Adobe hasn't a long history of systematic lying, unlike Microsoft.

"Microsoft smacks patch-blocking rootkit second time," says another new report from Gregg Keizer.

For the second month in a row, Microsoft has tried to eradicate a mutating rootkit that has blocked some Windows users from installing security updates.


Here is another one (also here):

Jerry Bryant, a group manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), said his team is looking into Raskin's claims, but hinted that Microsoft wouldn't be patching IE anytime soon. "I wouldn't classify this as a 'vulnerability' though," Bryant said in an e-mail answer to questions.


The followup says:

Will browser makers patch this? Unlikely. Microsoft's Jerry Bryant, a general manager at the company's security response center, said the issue isn't a security vulnerability per se, and that Internet Explorer (IE) falls for the scam because that's the way browsers work.

"Working with [Raskin's] proof-of-concept, as written, is expected," he said in an e-mail Tuesday when asked whether Microsoft had a fix in mind for IE.


Let's remember how much damage was caused this year because Microsoft had refused to patch known Internet Explorer flaws for five months [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]. Where is the liability [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]? Watch what it happening in Denver right now.

Denver officials have asked the FBI, Denver police and Microsoft Corp. to help them identify the person or people who have hacked into the city's website twice in the past week.


If Microsoft gets involved, then it almost must be a Windows server.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Rewriting Things in Rust
How far would you go?
What Microsoft Reputation Laundering (With a Weaponised Law Degree) Looks Like in a Foreign Continent
You would expect this in uncivilised and primitive countries
Slopwatch: LLMs 'Write' Fake or Distorted 'News' About "Linux"
LLM slop disguised as news
 
“Twibel” Actions Against Comedians (and Why It's a Truly Low Blow)
they try to make up in quantities for a lack of merit or quality
Linux Foundation Apparently Flirting With Slop (Marketing by LLM-Generated SPAM)
The Web is in a really bad state!
COVID-19 Sped Up Site Improvements in Techrights
A few months later we created our very own IRC network
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: Negative Questions and 'Touching Grass' (Going Outside)
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Dalai Lama Succession as 90th Birthday Approaches, 40 deg C in China
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Hungary and US Defecting to Russia, "Google's Hotseat Hypocrisy"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: 4th of July 2025 and "Zig Roadmap 2026"
Links for the day
How to Combat the Exploitation and Abuse by Microsoft GitHub
Not to mention corruption and crimes against women
Bryan Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People
"[Lunduke] is actually sending his audience to attack people."
Even The Right Wing is Rejecting Bryan Lunduke
no wonder he became so irrelevant and marginal
Microsoft's MSN Helps Microsoft Spread Lies About the Layoffs' Scale (Well Over 25,000 People Laid Off This Year)
There seem to be monopolies on lies and on truth
The Death of X Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (by Compromised Media)
X.Org Server is alive and well
In 2025 Everything is "AI". Remember Blockchains?
Talk about what companies and things (services, products, software) actually do, not the labels they use
Julian Assange Has Been Free for a Year
Julian Assange and I disagreed on some things
Monopolies and Scalping
Monopolies gravitate towards price hikes
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 04, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 04, 2025
Microsoft's August Layoffs Wave: "August is Confirmed for Additional Performance Based Cuts"
"August is confirmed for additional performance based cuts from the recent connects along with additional organizational cuts."
Links 04/07/2025: Google Replaces the Web With Slop, "AI Might Kill Us All"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: Mindfulness and F1
Links for the day
Weeks After Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia the Company Shuts Down in Pakistan, Too
Last month Windows' share in Pakistan fell to an all-time low
Rob Musial's June 2025 Additions of Malware in Proprietary Software
Via the GNU Web site this week
Links 04/07/2025: Microsoft's H-1B Visa Applications Show Another Crisis Unfolding, Many More Deep Cuts and Shutdowns Revealed, Complete Microsoft Exits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: A Day To Remember and "Stop Killing Games"
Links for the day
Crime and Corruption at Microsoft GitHub Cannot be Covered Up by SLAPPs in Another Continent
We'll write about this for a long time to come
Slop Videos Are Disappointing Garbage, Nothing New, Just Brute Force up on Display or a Pedestal of Slop
Slop videos aren't a new thing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 03, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 03, 2025
The War on Local Storage (People Hosting Their Files Locally and Privately)
There's nothing wrong with controlling one's computing
What Digital Independence Means
Independence in the digital realms means abandoning platforms like GitHub, not just rejecting proprietary software
NVidia is a Bubble
they temporarily see fortunes and wrongly assume perpetuity thereof
Fedora Does Not Care About Diversity and Inclusion, It's About Optics (Corporate Image)
any notion of inclusion is superficial and misleading
Don't Buy the Excuses for Microsoft's Mass Layoffs
Back in the 90s, Microsoft bought a lot of companies to get and stay ahead
Happy Independence Day to Our American Readers
Maybe tomorrow will be a good opportunity to explain to American people - in terms of concepts, not brands - which tools respect their independence
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Linuxsecurity, and Google News Getting Even Worse (More Slopfarms Added Which Attack Linux With Bruce-Force SPAM)
Google News is part of the same problem
Links 03/07/2025: More Cuts and Cancellations at Microsoft Revealed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/07/2025: Favourite Child and Launching WikiGem
Links for the day
GNU/Linux is Replacing Microsoft Windows. But We Need to Eradicate Microsoft, It's a Hub of Crime.
I have been writing about Microsoft since the 1990s when I was in school
Mystery Surrounding the PCLinuxOS Sites and PCLinuxOS Magazine
Let's hope this isn't something major
People and Companies Do Learn Some Lessons From Their Mistakes (Stubborn Ones Don't)
Brett Wilson LLP is an example of one that would rather drown in mistakes
Links 03/07/2025: 'Hey Hi' Slop Ridiculed Some More and Microsoft's Layoffs Tally for 2025 Reaches About 29,000 in Just 6 Months (Almost 5,000 Per Month)
Links for the day
Microsoft Staff Harassing Women, Strangling Women, Telling Women to Kill Themselves and Worse? Not a Problem!
Two women have left Brett Wilson LLP
The Slopfarms Are Losing the Plot (and Google is Propping Up Rogue Sites)
Google is part of the attack on the Web, on information, and on technology
New BetaNews Realises There's No Potential or Future in Slopfarms, Prior Editor Wayne Williams is Back
They realise that slop (so-called "AI") cannot replace humans
Claims That Microsoft Looks for Staff That Works More and Gets Paid Less (or Can Only Code by Grabbing Other People's Code, Under the Guise of "AI")
People can form their own opinion
Richard Stallman Was Right About Reasons Not to Use Microsoft
last updated 2017
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 02, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 02, 2025
Gemini Links 03/07/2025: No to Cloudflare and Small Web July
Links for the day