Patch Tuesday brings little relief from browser exploits

Six fixes issued, but new IE zero day emerges along with Firefox flaw.

Microsoft has issued its monthly 'Patch Tuesday' security update, with some serious browser flaws patched, but a new IE zero-day has been seen being exploited in the wild, and Firefox users have also been warned about a serious vulnerability.

The Patch Tuesday release contained a total of six bulletins, of which three were ranked 'Critical'. These included cover for some of the DirectShow vulnerabilities uncovered and exploited in the wild in recent weeks, but it seems users of Windows are doomed never to rest easy, as details of another zero-day, this time in Microsoft Office Web Components, were widely publicised just the day before Patch Tuesday, with reports of active exploitation on malicious websites hosted in China.

Other serious vulnerabilities addressed by the Patch Tuesday updates include problems with the 'Embedded OpenType Font Engine', a selection of issues with ActiveX, and in the less significant category, vulnerabilities in VirtualPC and Virtual Server, ISA Server and Office Publisher.

The Firefox bug is in the Javascript compiler system, and affects the latest version, 3.5. Like the IE problems, it could be exploited by malicious sites to allow remote system access. A blog entry on the issue is on the Mozilla security pages here, with a Secunia overview here.

The full Patch Tuesday release from Microsoft is here, with an advisory on the latest problem to emerge here - Secunia's coverage of it is here, and a McAfee blog entry detailing the exploitation is here.

15 July 2009

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