14 DAY TRIAL // On December 13th, 2011, Microsoft released a number of 13 security bulletins to address various flaws that its Windows platform and other products were found to have.
Among these, we can count a number of no less than three rated Critical in severity, while the rest of 10 are rated Important. The company recommends for users to install these as soon as possible.
These bulletins were released as part of the company’s regular monthly release cycle aimed at offering better protection for customers by resolving a number of 19 unique vulnerabilities in various products.
Two of them should be a priority when it comes to updates, Angela Gunn, senior response communications manager, Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, explains:
- MS11-092 – Windows Media: Vulnerability In Windows Media Could Allow Remote Code Execution - MS11-087 – Windows: Vulnerability in Windows Kernel-Mode Drivers Could Allow Remote Code Execution
The third Critical bulletin is MS11-090 – Cumulative Security Update of ActiveX Kill Bits (2618451), a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft software.
One thing that should be noted here is that Microsoft announced last week that it planned on releasing a number of 14 security updates, but that one of them was postponed.
The software giant notes that they “discovered an apps-compatibility issue between one bulletin-candidate and a major third-party vendor,” and that the update will arrive after the issue has been addressed.
Some suggest that the major vendor would be SAP, a technology behemoth, and that the bulletin meant to fix BEAST, or the Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS, would have affected software around the world, something that Microsoft wanted to avoid.
“As ever, we’d much rather withdraw a potential bulletin than ship something that might inconvenience customers, however limited that inconvenience in scope,” Angela Gunn continues.
“The issue addressed in that bulletin, which we have been monitoring and against which we have seen no active attacks in the wild, was discussed in Security Advisory 2588513.”
The security updates for Windows released on Windows Update on December 13, 2011 were put on download as a DVD5 ISO image file for Windows versions up to Vista. It is available on Softpedia via this link.