Microsoft Rereleases Patch to Fix Problems

AbdullahHaydar writes "From CRN: 'One day after releasing a fix for an Office XP flaw, Microsoft upgraded the severity of the vulnerability to critical and re-issued a new patch to address a new attack scenario discovered in the last 24 hours.' The funny thing is that the second bug they missed with the first fix is 'critical' whereas the original bug the fix was for is 'important.'"

Comments

new method

[firstadopter.com]

Microsoft needs a new method of installing these patches. How many us have spent HOURS a day installing and installing and rebooting and rebooting.

Us vs Them

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be afraid to embrace changes that could propel us way ahead of them.

So this is what it's come down to? How many people share the "us" vs. "them" mentality? I thought people contributed to Linux in order to take part in something greater than what they could do alone, rather than as a way of beating Gates & Co.

I know, I know... I must be new around here.

Patch requires install CDs

[mmusson]

I tried to install the first patch last night and found that I had to apply office SP2 first. Ok. So, I ran office SP2 and it required the install CDs.

I travel extensively for work and I don't carry around all my install CDs for my laptop. So, I cannot even install the critical security patch because I cannot install office SP2.

I think this is a problem when people that would want to install this 'critical' security patch are not able to. Why can't this patch be stand-alone (not require install CDs) like the ones available from the windows update site?

Re:Patches

[rusty0101]

Nope. When Microsoft releases a patch, it's not always good or bad. I think that most people would catagorize what is updated into one of three catagories,

Good thing: patches that prevent remote exploits of upnp, remote takeover via corrupted mp3 files, or valid mp3 files with embeded URL's to locations that allow script kiddies to make use of your computer, and the like.

Bad thing: patches that update the EULA to allow Microsoft to keep track of what music, videos, etc. you like to pay attention to. Patches that break your firewall, knocking you off the Internet completely.

WTF?: stuff that gets tossed in, updating files that do not seem to have anything to do with the documented issues that the patch supposedly addresses.

Then again, how many of us know exactly what each file in the Windows package is responsible for what actions? Not a lot of us. So if you do a md5sum catalog of the files on your system, install the patch, then compare the md5sums and discover a bunch of files that you can't explain have been changed, who would you go to?

As far as comparing it to patches for Linux, again, there really are not all that many people who know exactly what every line affected by a patch does, but you can at least look for yourself, and if you have questions, there there are an abundance of people who _can_ read the affected files, with understanding, who can explain what the patch does affect.

Then again what do I know, I only use Win2kP, and a couple different distributions of Linux. I'm probably some crazy Linux advocate who would threaten your very existance if you said anything realy bad about Linux.

-Rusty

Outlook?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about Outlook problems? Nobody here should be using Outlook anyway. That should be the litmus test as to whether or not you belong on this site. It's not an anti-Microsoft thing, it's a common sense thing. Outlook has more bugs in it than a middle eastern embassy in Washington D.C.

What Differentiates Linux from Windows

[jlrowe]

It is odd that only moments after reading about 'What differentiates Linux from Windows', how the very design of Windows leads to problems making fixes for security things gone wrong, the story of this latest patch problem appears. It is verification of the story I just read, in perfect example.

Synopsis:
Microsoft reacts to marketing pressure to make design decisions favoring running a few processes faster but then finds itself forced first to layer in backward compatibility and then to engage in a patch-and-kludge upgrade process until the code becomes so bloated, slow and unreliable that wholesale replacement is again called for.

Download?

[utlemming]

And the big problem of the day is that you cannot download the file, because, well Microsoft is having problems with their website. Go figure. I mean, they say that the file is a critical upgrade, and then it is inaccessable. You would think that for the $300-$800 people pay for Office, they would at least have the bandwidth to get critical patches.

Re:Download?

[utlemming]

Just another update -- they removed the link, as of 8:32MST, from the download page. The link is here. Which is rather interesting. Too much demand or did they find another bug?