Microsoft Releases Critical Patches

[gonzo]

Originally posted by girlgeek@Oct 19 2003, 05:45 PM
I'm sure that everyone heard about this on Thursday, but I didn't see a thread. Microsoft announced five new critical flaws in their operating systems, that could allow an attacker access to your system. These new vulnerabilities are much like last month's Blaster worm. I have automatic update enabled on my Windows Machine, and it did not automatically download the patches. I had to do it manually. I'm sitting behind a router and have DCOM disabled, so I wasn't too worried, but I would still patch these flaws. These updates affect Windows 2003, XP, 2000, NT 4.0 and Me is only affected by one. Windows 98 should be OK, unless you have add-ons of the affected services.

You can read about the updates here:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/security...015_windows.asp

Here is the Reuters article on the release of the critical updates:

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml...623434§ion=news

There are also a couple of nasty viruses running around out there. A couple of old ones have been surfacing this week. If you are not running an anti-virus, check out AVG Anti-virus. The free download is a basic interface, but it is better than nothing.

Realistically...who do you think would ever exploit any of these vulernabilites?

In the day to day biz world this only stops many programs/services from running properly. And thats the biggest problem. Hell I know of 3 companies that have benfitted in doing nothing but anti virus and "critical updates" over the past 6 months and they are expanding.

Im more worried about Unix xploits.