14 DAY TRIAL // On December 11, Microsoft made available the latest bundle of patches for Internet Explorer. The Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-069 - Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (942615) was labeled with a severity rating of Critical, and designed to address no less than four vulnerabilities spanning across IE5.01, IE6 and IE7, on Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, but also on Windows XP and Windows Vista. Following the introduction of the security bulletin, IE users began reporting loading issues with the browser.
At that time, Kieron Shorrock, Microsoft Security Response Center Program Manager, revealed that the problems were isolated, and only involved the company's Bulletin Webpage. Without delivering any modifications to the security patch package, Microsoft proceeded to alter the Bulletin page in order to fix the upload times issues in IE. And for a few days it apparently worked. But at the same time, it is clear that the Redmond company has crippled Internet Explorer with the MS07-069 Cumulative Security Update.
In this regard, Shorrock confirmed the fact that Microsoft has been hard at work investigating user reports that pointed to IE functionality issues, generated by the deployment of the latest cumulative set of updates. Shorrock acknowledged the issues, but at the same time, he revealed that not all Internet Explorer users were affected.
"We have been working with a small number of customers that reported issues related to the installation of MS07-069. Specifically, on a Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2)-based computer, Internet Explorer 6 may stop responding when you try to a visit a web site. We've made an update to the Knowledge Base article for MS07-069, KB942615, which highlights the known issue. We have also added the following known issue Knowledge Base article KB946627. Because this occurs in a customized installation, this isn't a widespread issue", Shorrock revealed.