- Oct 23, 2012
- 12,527
Microsoft has recently revealed that this month’s Patch Tuesday rollout will bring us a total of seven security updates for a wide array of software, including the Windows operating system and Internet Explorer.
Three of these security bulletins are considered to be critical and at least one will require a computer reboot, which means that system administrators must prepare to save the current state of their systems in order to restart each machine.
What’s more important, however, is that the most popular Microsoft products will be patched next week, starting with Windows and ending with Internet Explorer, Office, and Exchange.
Critical Word patch coming
Wolfgang Kandek of Qualys says that, while Windows is getting a critical patch, which makes this Patch Tuesday really important for all those running Microsoft’s operating system, a Word patch is actually getting a bit more attention.
Kandek explains that this particular bulletin is aimed at issues on both Windows and Mac OS X, and the latest versions of Office are all affected.
“A critical rating is only given if the vulnerability can be triggered without user interaction, which happens fairly rarely, typically when the Outlook preview can be tricked to run the malicious code automatically,” he explains.
Windows 10 not getting any patch
Windows 10 Technical Preview won’t receive any security update during the next Patch Tuesday cycle, as the found vulnerabilities only exist in Windows 8.1 and older versions of the Windows operating system.
At this point, build 9888 is the latest version of Windows 10 that’s available for users, and instead of rolling out security fixes, Microsoft is more focused on fixing bugs and performance issues in the operating system in order to make sure that everything works really well when development is completed.
Windows 10 is very likely to reach a new milestone next month, when Microsoft plans to launch the Consumer Preview build of this product, thus making sure that more users actually give it a chance and send feedback that can be analyzed in time for the public launch.
Windows XP users, on the other hand, are still recommended to upgrade to a newer Windows version, and although it’s not yet clear whether these flaws also exist in XP or not, there’s no doubt that a 13-year-old operating system cannot provide the same protection as a modern release does.
Windows XP is still installed on approximately 13 percent of desktop systems worldwide, according to the latest statistics, so the risk of getting hacked is still there for a large number of companies and organizations.
Three of these security bulletins are considered to be critical and at least one will require a computer reboot, which means that system administrators must prepare to save the current state of their systems in order to restart each machine.
What’s more important, however, is that the most popular Microsoft products will be patched next week, starting with Windows and ending with Internet Explorer, Office, and Exchange.
Critical Word patch coming
Wolfgang Kandek of Qualys says that, while Windows is getting a critical patch, which makes this Patch Tuesday really important for all those running Microsoft’s operating system, a Word patch is actually getting a bit more attention.
Kandek explains that this particular bulletin is aimed at issues on both Windows and Mac OS X, and the latest versions of Office are all affected.
“A critical rating is only given if the vulnerability can be triggered without user interaction, which happens fairly rarely, typically when the Outlook preview can be tricked to run the malicious code automatically,” he explains.
Windows 10 not getting any patch
Windows 10 Technical Preview won’t receive any security update during the next Patch Tuesday cycle, as the found vulnerabilities only exist in Windows 8.1 and older versions of the Windows operating system.
At this point, build 9888 is the latest version of Windows 10 that’s available for users, and instead of rolling out security fixes, Microsoft is more focused on fixing bugs and performance issues in the operating system in order to make sure that everything works really well when development is completed.
Windows 10 is very likely to reach a new milestone next month, when Microsoft plans to launch the Consumer Preview build of this product, thus making sure that more users actually give it a chance and send feedback that can be analyzed in time for the public launch.
Windows XP users, on the other hand, are still recommended to upgrade to a newer Windows version, and although it’s not yet clear whether these flaws also exist in XP or not, there’s no doubt that a 13-year-old operating system cannot provide the same protection as a modern release does.
Windows XP is still installed on approximately 13 percent of desktop systems worldwide, according to the latest statistics, so the risk of getting hacked is still there for a large number of companies and organizations.
