ID: IRCNE2013091947
Date: 2013-09-07
According to "computerworld", Microsoft today said it will ship 14 security updates next week to patch critical vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer (IE), Windows, Office and SharePoint, its enterprise collaboration platform.
The IE update, slated to affect every supported version, from the soon-to-be-retired IE6 to the newest IE10, was at the top of most security experts' lists, including the one crafted by Andrew Storms, director of DevOps at CloudPassage.
Of the 14 updates slated to ship next Tuesday, Microsoft pegged four as critical, the company's most severe rating. The other 10 will be labeled "important," the next step down in Microsoft's four-step threat system.
Storms also put the spotlight on what Microsoft marked as "Bulletin 2," which will quash one or more bugs in Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010, the email clients included with Office 2007 and Office 2010, the most widely-used editions of the company's productivity suite.
Kandek argued that the bug or bugs to be patched by Bulletin 2 will turn out to be exploitable if hackers can simply get users to preview an e-mail in Outlook.
"The Outlook update is almost as important as the one for IE, because next to the browser, your email reader is just as popular and important," said Storms of corporate users.
One of the two remaining critical bulletins will affect only Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, while the second will address one or more flaws in SharePoint Server 2007, 2010 and 2013, and in Office Web Apps 2010.
Bulletin 1, which impacts SharePoint, Office's collaboration platform, will also be important to patch pronto, some said today. "I believe Bulletin 1 is the most dangerous because it allows remote code execution on SharePoint servers," said Tommy Chin, a technical support engineer at CORE Security, in an email.
Several of the 10 updates marked important will patch vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely, including three involving Word, Excel and Access, the word processor, spreadsheet and database applications within the Office bundle.
"Almost every part of the Office suite will be patched," said Storms, only slightly exaggerating. "We haven't seen a heavy Office release like this in quite some time."
Microsoft will release next week's security updates on Sept. 10 around 1 p.m. ET.
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