14 DAY TRIAL // Not a day goes by that Microsoft does something to make the headlines. And security threats, vulnerabilities, crashes and hackers are the main dish on a daily basis. Yesterday Gates said Microsoft will start alerting the world's governments early about cyberthreats and security flaws in its attack-prone software. Today it gave early warning that next Tuesday it will administer the monthly dose of security bulletins and patches will be among its biggest ever.
According to the Advance Notification service, which pre-announces upcoming patches but limits the information disclosed, the next set of patches includes 13 security bulletins, at least three of which will be marked "Critical".
Nine of the bulletins were created for Microsoft Windows, and this shows real dedication since that is a much-higher-than-normal number, and three times what the company published in January. The rest of the crowd eyes bugs in SharePoint Services, Microsoft Office, the .Net Framework, Visual Studio, Windows Media Player, and MSN Messenger.
There are still vulnerabilities in Win XP SP2's line of defense, Romanian Security Company GeCAD NET has notified Microsoft about the possibility of exploiting the vulnerability on systems patched with MS05-001. Early last month, GeCAD NET has released a maximum degree risk alert, in order to warn about the possibility of attacks being launched against Windows XP and Windows 2000 systems patched up-to-date, by using a previously vulnerability reported on security lists on the Internet.