Patch Tuesday release includes 13 bulletins

26 vulnerabilities featured in sizeable update set.

After a relatively quiet January, administrators are faced with a hefty workload this week as Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday security release featured 13 updates covering 26 separate issues with Windows and other Microsoft software.

In five bulletins labelled 'Critical', remote code execution problems with TCP/IP, SMB clients, Windows Shell Handler, DirectShow and ActiveX are all fixed. Of the remaining eight, one, in the once-ubiquitous Paint, is labelled only 'moderate', despite also allowing remote code execution, while those described as 'important' include a fix for six separate issues with PowerPoint, and other updates for the Windows Kernel, Kerberos, SMB Server, the Client-Server Runtime Subsystem, the Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V system, and Microsoft Office, this last issue again allowing remote code execution and treated as more serious by other security watchers including SANS, who graded it as 'Critical' for clients along with the PowerPoint and Paint problems.

There were no accompanying updates from Adobe this month, as its fixes are scheduled for quarterly release and last month saw a bumper crop, but the company behind Flash and the world's most popular PDF viewer has come under increasing fire for its record on vulnerabilities of late, with many new year reports predicting an increase in the growth of malware using PDF and Flash exploits.

Another software giant, Oracle, announced an out-of-band update to fix some serious security holes in its WebLogic solution last week - details can be found here.

Microsoft's security bulletins can be found here, with a summary from SANS here. Comment on the release can be found at The Register here, with more on Adobe's woes here and details of the Oracle update here.

10 February 2010

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