Posts tagged Patch Tuesday

2 min Microsoft

Patch Tuesday - July Edition!

This month's patch Tuesday the polar opposite of last month's ho-hum, here-we-go-again-with-the-patches exercise. There are 7 advisories and 6 of those are critical issues allowing remote code execution. Basically everything in the core Microsoft world is affected by one or more of these, every supported OS, every version of MS Office, Lync, Silverlight, Visual Studio and .NET.  It's going to be a busy time for security teams everywhere. For the first time ever Microsoft is addressing a singl

2 min Microsoft

Patch Tuesday - April 2013 Edition!

The April 2013 MS Tuesday advisories are is out and it forecasts an interesting patching session for Microsoft administrators.  There are 9 advisories, for 14 CVEs, affecting 16 distinct platforms in 5 categories of Microsoft products, including the not-often-seen patching of “Microsoft Office Web Apps” and “Microsoft Security Software”. Once again there is an IE patch (MS13-028) which is rated critical, but this one differs from last month's incarnation by applying to all supported versions

1 min Nexpose

How to Check for Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Services

There are many organizations concerned with the critical Microsoft Security Bulletin MS12-020 [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms12-020] Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) vulnerability. Here is a quick way to check if you have Remote Desktop Protocol running on your system or network. I used NMAP [http://nmap.org/] to check my home network. In the highlighted text below you can see that NMAP can check for the RDP service running. If you can't patch, this is important because at

2 min Microsoft

Microsoft Patch Tuesday - November 2011

November's Microsoft Patch Tuesday contains four bulletins: one “critical”, two “importants”, and one “moderate”. The majority of these bulletins relate to Microsoft's later versions of the OS, implying that the flaws they address were possibly introduced with Windows Vista. Generally more vulnerabilities are found in earlier versions of the OS, so this month is unusual. The critical bulletin – MS11-083 – is a TCP/IP based, specifically UDP, vulnerability which affects Vista, Windows 7, Server

2 min Patch Tuesday

October 2011 Patch Tuesday

This month, Microsoft issued eight bulletins, addressing 23 vulnerabilities across Microsoft Windows, Silverlight, .NET and Forefront product lines. Only two bulletins were rated 'critical', and the rest were rated 'important'. In terms of prioritizing patching, when I look at security vulnerabilities, first I want to understand which ones can have the most widespread impact. MS11-081is a cumulative update which affects Internet Explorer, so it relates to both corporate and home users. These v

2 min Microsoft

Microsoft September 2011 Patch Tuesday

This month, Microsoft issued five bulletins to address 15 vulnerabilities.  All of these bulletins are rated “important”; however, while there are no “critical” bulletins this month, organizations should not downplay the vulnerabilities being addressed. It's easy for organizations to gain a false sense of security during a light patch month and sometimes an attitude of complacency towards non-critical vulnerabilities is evident. “Important” vulnerabilities may not give attackers the full roo

1 min Microsoft

August Patch Tuesday

Yesterday was Microsoft Patch Tuesday, with 13 bulletins issued to address 22 vulnerabilities. Of these, only two are rated “critical”; the first of which – MS11-057 – is the latest Internet Explorer cumulative patch. Until this one is patched, we'd recommend limiting your use of Internet Explorer to only visiting trusted sites and remember that it's never a good idea to click on suspect or unknown links. If users are still concerned, they may want to consider using one of the alternate browser

2 min Patch Tuesday

July Patch Tuesday

Only four bulletins in July's Patch Tuesday, but patching a not insignificant 22 vulnerabilities. Only one of the bulletins is classified “critical”: MS11-053. This should be taken seriously as it can allow remote command execution to clients on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. This could affect both consumer and corporate users. In addition, wireless vulnerabilities like this one (MS11-053) are always considered quite sexy because if successfully exploited they allow attackers to do anything the

1 min Patch Tuesday

June Patch Tuesday

This month's Patch Tuesday was another biggie: 16 bulletins addressing 34 vulnerabilities across IE, Office and Windows... Top of the list of things to watch out for are two “critical” bulletins: MS11-050 and MS11-52. These are are effectively attacker's delight since they are browser based, which are the most coveted exploits. They affect Internet Explorer 6,7, and 8: and once these vulnerabilities are weaponized they will be a significant problem as many organizations give their users admi

1 min Patch Tuesday

May Patch Tuesday

So yesterday was Patch Tuesday, and following a mammoth April [https://community.rapid7.com/blogs/rapid7/2011/04/15/april-patch-tuesday-round-up] , it was a pretty quiet one, with only 2 vulnerabilities reported [http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS11-may.mspx], and only one of those given the most severe rating of “critical”.  That said, of course any vulnerability reported should be investigated and understood, and particularly those rated critical. This month the critical

2 min Microsoft

April Patch Tuesday Round-Up

LOTS of patches from Microsoft this week... This week's Patch Tuesday was pretty significant, with a record-tying 17 bulletins that patch a record 64 vulnerabilities, 15 more than the previous largest-ever set in October 2010.  As usual, the Rapid7 team was all over it, monitoring the threat and trying to help out where possible. This month's bulletin addresses vulnerabilities across Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, Visual Studio, .NET Framework and GDI . There are seve

2 min Vulnerability Disclosure

March Patch Tuesday Roundup

Since Microsoft is on this new staggered pattern of releases, we can expect a feast or famine every other month...so get used to it. Depending on what side of the desk you sit on you can adjust the context. With that being said, this month's release brought us 3 patches addressing  4 vulnerabilities. I think we were all expecting to see the MHTML [http://www.cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2011-0096] protocol handler issue resolved, however it didn't make the cut. Make sure IE is in r

2 min Patch Tuesday

January Patch Tuesday Roundup

So I know we all were hoping to see a fix for some of this Windows Graphic Rendering Engine [http://] nastiness...but no go. For now, you'll need to resort to the good ol' FixIt [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2490606] option or if you wanna get your hands dirty, you can modify the ACL on shimgvw.dll directly. Either way, if you're running IE, you'll have to patiently wait for the official patch release. So this monthly release was lean-n-mean, Microsoft released (2) bulletins, addressing (3)

1 min Patch Tuesday

November Patch Tuesday Roundup

Microsoft's November Patch Tuesday was fairly light with only 3 security bulletins covering 11 vulnerabilities, only one bulletin, MS10-087, was rated critical.    The bulletin related to MS Office 2007 and Office 2010 vulnerability which could be exploited by a classic drive by type attack when a customer views a malicious RTF. As Josh Abraham, Rapid7 security research analyst noted, the fact that November is fairly light could be a blessing. "Based on the huge amount of patches from last mo

1 min Patch Tuesday

October Patch Tuesday Roundup

Although Microsoft's October patch covers 39 vulnerabilities, there are only 4 critical bulletins.   One of the vulnerabilities, covered by bulletin MS10-083, was reported to Microsoft by HD Moore back in 2006.   Unfortunately, according to HD Moore, despite the long wait, the fix “does not completely solve the underlying vulnerability, but it does block the easiest routes to exploitation.” In addition, Josh Abraham, one of Rapid7's vulnerability research experts, recommend paying attention to