News
Microsoft Plans 5 Patches for Tuesday
- By Stephen Swoyer
- April 05, 2007
On top of this week's
major
update to Microsoft's Windows GDI implementation, Redmond next week plans
to issue no less than four Windows security bulletins, including at least one
"critical" update.
These patches will require a restart, according to Microsoft's Thursday Advance Notification posting.
In addition, Microsoft is prepping at least one "critical" update
for its Microsoft Content Management Server. These updates, too, could require
a restart, Redmond confirms.
Microsoft also plans to release an update for its Windows Malicious Software
Removal Tool on Tuesday. That patch will be available via all the standard methods
except Software Update Services (SUS).
Thursday's advance notification isn't always the last word in Patch Tuesday
deliverables, of course. In January, for example, Microsoft yanked several promised
Windows patches from its Patch Tuesday payload. Redmond typically pulls a patch
if it discovers problems during testing or if it identifies other issues.
Next Tuesday's patch haul might seem a little anticlimactic, coming as it does
on the heels of this week's high-profile GDI bulletin. That update patched a
total of seven GDI flaws, one of which -- a vulnerability in Microsoft's Windows
Animated Cursor Handling implementation -- was linked to a known zero day exploit.
On Tuesday, officials
disclosed more about the backstory to this week's GDI update, noting that
in the months since the Windows Animated Cursor Handling flaw was first brought
to Microsoft's attention, Redmond was able to identify and patch a number of
related vulnerabilities, too.
"[O]ur investigation through January and February showed that there was a dependency between one of the files required to address a related vulnerability in a system driver that runs in kernel mode [win32k.sys]...and the file that needed to be updated to resolve Windows Animated Cursor Handling vulnerability [user32.dll]," wrote researcher Mike Reavey on the MSRC blog. "That dependency meant a comprehensive update needed both files to be applied to systems at the same time, and our investigation included multiple components."
The upshot, Reavey wrote, is that Microsoft identified a total of seven vulnerabilities,
which it decided to patch in a single update instead of asking customers to
separately patch each of the flaws.
About the Author
Stephen Swoyer is a Nashville, TN-based freelance journalist who writes about technology.