14 DAY TRIAL // Today Microsoft has rolled out this month’s Patch Tuesday updates, providing us with 13 different security fixes supposed to address vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, and other software solutions in its portfolio.
While 13 might be an unlucky number, we’re actually a bit lucky this month because only 3 critical fixes are included in this release, so IT administrators are recommended to prioritize deployment of these three before everything else.
The three critical updates are MS15-043 - Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (3049563), MS15-044 - Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Font Drivers Could Allow Remote Code Execution (3057110), and MS15-045 - Vulnerability in Windows Journal Could Allow Remote Code Execution (3046002). They’re aimed at Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, Silverlight, and .NET Framework.
While consumers are recommended to install all of them, one particular update that’s very important for them is MS15-043 because it brings fixes for Internet Explorer.
“This security update resolves vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. The most severe of the vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted webpage using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the current user. Customers whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than those who operate with administrative user rights,” Redmond explains.
More than 1 GB of updates
Depending on the Microsoft software installed on your computer, the size of the updates you get could vary, but in some cases, it could even exceed 1 GB.
As you can see in this photo published by Richard Hay, a Windows 8.1 computer with Office installed gets nearly 1.2 GB of updates, so the actual downloading process could take longer than expected.
We were a bit luckier and only received 150 MB of updates, although Office 2016 Preview is also installed on our computers and the number of patches is the same: 41.
As said, the size of the update could vary because of several factors, such as installed software, OS version, and others, so make sure you have a look at how much you need to download before starting the process.