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Microsoft Plans Largest-Ever Patch Tuesday
CWmike writes "Microsoft said it will deliver its largest-ever number of security updates on Tuesday to fix 13 flaws in every version of Windows, as well as Internet Explorer (IE), Office, SQL Server, important developer tools and Forefront Security client software. Among the updates will be the first for the final, or release to manufacturing, code of Windows 7, Microsoft's newest operating system. The 13 updates slated for next week, eight of them pegged 'critical,' beat the previous record of 12 updates shipped in February 2007 and again in October 2008." Update Reader Kurt Seifried writes to correct the math a bit, pointing to Microsoft's Advance Notification page for the release, which says that rather than 13 flaws, this Patch Tuesday involves "13 bulletins (eight critical and five important), addressing 34 vulnerabilities ... Most of these updates require a restart so please factor that into your deployment planning."
I was about to bitch about the submitter/moderator not RTFA, but it turns out, the article doesn't mention it either, so I'll clarify instead: thirteen updates are being released which together address thirty-four security vulnerabilities of varying severity across varying products (ten of which are targetted at Windows). So, that's NOT thirteen flaws (plenty more actually), just thirteen updates, some of which (all?) address multiple flaws in the particular system they are targetted at. Of course, this is just the advance notification, so full details about how many vulnerabilities each update addresses and the general information on them won't be released until the patches are next Tuesday. I think it's also worth nothing (although the summary of course neglects to mention it) that the good aspect of these updates are both major zero-day exploits (targetting IIS & SMB 2.0) are patched with these updates.
And while I'm posting, why does Slashdot insist on linking to shitty tech magazine articles (poorly) summarising the raw and accurate data straight from Microsoft? Seriously, I'm not sure if it's some sort of aversion to linking to MS, but they're the ones doing the patching, so it follows that they have the best, newest, most accurate data on them, and they'll likely be the first to provide updates on their content. These articles are just summarising what Microsoft has published on their various web-sites, and being a summary, they provide a lot more information and raw data:
Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for October 2009
October 2009 Bulletin Release Advance Notification