Update Tuesday on Microsoft Security Response Center

Today, as part of Update Tuesday, we released nine security bulletins– three rated Critical and six rated Important in severity, to address 56 unique Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) in Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Server software. We encourage you to apply all of these updates. For more information about this month’s security updates, including the detailed view of the Exploitability Index (XI) broken down by each CVE, visit the Microsoft Bulletin Summary webpage.

Today, as part of Update Tuesday, we released eight security updates– one rated Critical and seven rated Important in severity, to address eight unique Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) in Microsoft Windows. We encourage you to apply all of these updates. For more information about this month’s security updates, including the detailed view of the Exploit Index (XI) broken down by each CVE, visit the Microsoft Bulletin Summary webpage.

Our Advance Notification Service (ANS) was created more than a decade ago as part of Update Tuesday to broadly communicate in advance, about the security updates being released for Microsoft products and services each month. Over the years, technology environments and customer needs have evolved, prompting us to evaluate our existing information and distribution channels.

Today we’re publishing the November 2013 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. The majority of questions focused on the ActiveX Kill Bits bulletin (MS13-090) and the advisories. We also answered a few general questions that were not specific to any of this month’s updates, but that may be of interest.

On October 1, 2003, Microsoft announced it would move to a monthly security bulletin cadence. Today, marks 10 years since that first monthly security update. We looked at many ways to improve our security preparedness and patch timing was the number one customer request. Your feedback was clear and we delivered a predictable schedule.

This month we release eight bulletins – four Critical and four Important - which address 25* unique CVEs in Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, SharePoint, .NET Framework, Office, and Silverlight. For those who need to prioritize their deployment planning, we recommend focusing on MS13-080, MS13-081, and MS13-083. Our Bulletin Deployment Priority graph provides an overview of this month’s priority releases (click for larger view).

Today we’re publishing the September 2013 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. The majority of questions focused on Office bulletins, especially SharePoint Server (MS13-067). We received multiple Office related questions that were very similar in nature, so the questions have been merged, as applicable, with consolidated answers provided. We were able to answer six questions on air, and those we did not have time for have been included on the Q&A page.

Helen Hunt Jackson famously wrote, “By all lovely tokens September is here, with summer’s best of weather and autumn’s best of cheer.” I share Helen’s clear adoration for this time of year. As a sports fan, there are so many “lovely tokens” to enjoy. The baseball pennant race is heating up, college and pro football are underway, and various soccer leagues (real football to the rest of the world) continue.

Today we’re publishing the August 2013 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. We fielded 13 questions on various topics during the webcast, with specific bulletin questions focusing primarily on Exchange Server (MS13-061) and Windows Kernel (MS13-063). There were 3 additional questions during the webcast that we were unable to answer on air, and we have also answered those on the Q&A page.

Today we’re providing advance notification for the release of seven bulletins, six Critical and one Important, for July 2013. The Critical bulletins address vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, .NET Framework, Silverlight, Internet Explorer and GDI+. Also scheduled for inclusion among these Critical bulletins is an update to address CVE-2013-3660, which is a publicly known issue in the Kernel-Mode Drivers component of Windows.

Windows XP was originally released on August 24, 2001. Since that time, high-speed Internet connections and wireless networking have gone from being a rarity to the norm, and Internet usage has grown from 360 million to almost two-and-a-half billion users. Thanks to programs like Skype, we now make video calls with regularity, and social media has grown from a curiosity to a part of our everyday lives.

Today we’re publishing the January 2013 Out-of-Band Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. During the webcast, we fielded 17 questions focusing on Security Update MS13-088, and SecurityAdvisory 2794220 which was deprecated by this update release. All questions and answers are included in the transcript. We invite our customers to join us for the next scheduled webcast on Wednesday, February 13th at 11 a.

Today we’re publishing the January2013 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. During the webcast, we fielded 12 questions focusing primarily on the Print Spooler (MS12-001) and .NET Framework (MS13-004) updates. All questions are included on the Q&A page. We invite our customers to join us for the next scheduled webcast on Wednesday, February 13th at 11 a.

At the end of each year, some folks take a moment to jot down predictions about what the coming year has in store. I, on the other hand, do not do predictions. I am neither prognosticator, seer, fortune teller, prophet, clairvoyant, soothsayer, nor medium; although I have been accused of being a thaumaturge and security gnome, but only in good ways, of course.

Hello, Today we’re publishing the December 2012 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. During the webcast, we fielded five questions focusing primarily on Microsoft Word and the Office compatibility pack in MS12-079. All questions are included on the Q&A page. We invite our customers to join us for the next public webcast on Wednesday, January 9th at 11 a.

Security Updates Today we released six security bulletins to help protect our customers - four Critical, one Important, and one Moderate – addressing 19 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows Shell, Windows Kernel, Internet Explorer, Internet Information Services (IIS), .NET Framework, and Excel. For those who need to prioritize deployment, we recommend focusing on these two Critical updates first:

Today we’re providing advance notification of the release of seven bulletins, one Critical and six Important, which address 20 vulnerabilities for October 2012. The Critical bulletin addresses vulnerabilities in Microsoft Word. The six Important-rated bulletins will address issues in Windows, Microsoft Office, and SQL Server. This release will also address the issue in FAST Search Server first described in Security Advisory 2737111.

Hello, Today we published the September Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. During the webcast, we fielded thirteen questions, focusing primarily on MS12-061, covering Visual Studio Team Foundation Server; MS12-062, affecting System Center Configuration Manager; and Security Advisory 2736233, addressing Update Rollup for ActiveX Kill Bits. We have the slide deck from the webcast available for on-demand viewing as well.

Hello, Today we published the June Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page, and the June 2012 Security Bulletin Release Webcast slide deck. We fielded 23 questions on various topics during the webcast, including bulletins released, deployment tools, and update detection tools. Our webcast from Wednesday is now available for on-demand viewing.

For Update Tuesday we’re releasing seven security bulletins – three Critical-class and four Important – addressing 26 unique CVEs to further improve the security postures of Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, Dynamics AX, Microsoft Lync, and the Microsoft .NET Framework. In addition to the security bulletins, we are releasing an automatic updater feature for Windows Vista and Windows 7 untrusted certificates.