I think I was experiencing the same problem last month. From what I can tell it was caused by some corrupted system DLLs that the Windows Update process uses.
If you go to their update site, then go to the troubleshooting section, you should be able to find your problem. However, none of the solutions they provided worked. Here's what I did:
Go to a working windows machine and follow the "Manual installation instructions for Windows Update controls". It tells you to download and apply an iuctl.cab file. Once downloaded, move it to the machine in question and update per their instructions. That got me working. Attempting to do this on the "broken" machine always resulted in a corrupted iuctl.cab file, that's why I had to use another machine to get it.
As for your question about this problem being related to recent security flaws, I don't really know. I tend to think this is an unrelated problem, but I wouldn't rule out any correlation. I run AVG and Kerio firewall on my machine as well as the admittedly basic firewall on my hub/router so I don't suspect an attack of any sort. Of course, there probably are some holes/vulnerabilities that I am unaware of or unprepared for. At any rate, after I did this there hasn't been any problem so I hope this helps.
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If you go to their update site, then go to the troubleshooting section, you should be able to find your problem. However, none of the solutions they provided worked. Here's what I did:
Go to a working windows machine and follow the "Manual installation instructions for Windows Update controls". It tells you to download and apply an iuctl.cab file. Once downloaded, move it to the machine in question and update per their instructions. That got me working. Attempting to do this on the "broken" machine always resulted in a corrupted iuctl.cab file, that's why I had to use another machine to get it.
As for your question about this problem being related to recent security flaws, I don't really know. I tend to think this is an unrelated problem, but I wouldn't rule out any correlation. I run AVG and Kerio firewall on my machine as well as the admittedly basic firewall on my hub/router so I don't suspect an attack of any sort. Of course, there probably are some holes/vulnerabilities that I am unaware of or unprepared for. At any rate, after I did this there hasn't been any problem so I hope this helps.