14 DAY TRIAL // It will be an extremely light month for Microsoft as far as its upcoming security bulletin release is concerned. Jerry Bryant, Microsoft security program manager, revealed that on January 12, 2010, the Redmond company would serve a single patch designed to resolve just one security vulnerability affecting various supported versions of the Windows platform. It is nothing short of a break from the norm for the software giant, which usually plugs multiple security holes in its products with the updates offered as a part of its monthly patch cycle.
“It may be a new year but here in the Microsoft Security Response Center, it is business as usual. This month we have one bulletin addressing a single vulnerability in Windows. The vulnerability is critical on Windows 2000 and low for all other platforms. Customers with Windows 2000 systems will want to review and deploy this update as soon as possible but, as we will show in our release guidance next week, the Exploitability Index rating for this issue will not be high which lowers the overall risk,” Bryant stated.
Windows 7 users will indeed have to deploy the patch. However, considering the severity rating of Low delivered by Microsoft, the risk of attackers exploiting the vulnerability is minimum. Nonetheless, even considering the low level of risk, it is good practice to deploy the security update provided by the Redmond company in order to make sure that the computer is safe from any potential exploits targeting the flaw.
In addition, Bryant notes that customers will still have to wait a little while for a patch set up to resolve a denial of service vulnerability in the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol reported in November 2009. However, not only are attackers not exploiting the flaw, but even if they were, they couldn’t take control of a vulnerable machine or execute code remotely.
“I also want to proactively point out that we will not be addressing Security Advisory 977544 (Vulnerability in SMB Could Allow Denial of Service). We are still working on an update for the issue at this time. We are not aware of any active attacks using the exploit code that was made public for this vulnerability and continue to encourage customers to follow the guidance in the advisory which outlines best practices to help protect systems against attacks that originate outside of the enterprise perimeter," Bryant added.