Microsoft to Patch WMF Exploit Early

Chran writes "Microsoft has just announced that they will release a security update for the .WMF-exploit today at 2pm ET, instead of Tuesday, as originally planned. Microsoft writes: "Microsoft originally planned to release the update on Tuesday, January 10, 2006 as part of its regular monthly release of security bulletins, once testing for quality and application compatibility was complete. However, testing has been completed earlier than anticipated and the update is ready for release. In addition, Microsoft is releasing the update early in response to strong customer sentiment that the release should be made available as soon as possible."

Comments

Re:Reactive vs Proactive

[cnettel]

For an out-in-the-wild exploit, I would agree. For one that is currently, to their knowledge, not known among the script kiddies of the world, I'm not so sure. Releasing a patch will, generally, make those who are not yet prepared to implement it more vulnerable, if it means that knowledge of details is more wide-spread.

I think that some corporate users (especially) are quite thankful for patch Tuesdays; especially those that have been bitten by some compatibility issue previously and can't just run autoupdate of all desktops at night, but rather want to roll it out manually.

Again, this is not the case here, this exploit was discovered in the wild and it's spreading right now.