Posted on 08/09/2005 2:56:44 PM PDT by Panerai
Microsoft on Tuesday issued alerts on several security flaws in Windows, the most serious of which could allow an attacker to gain control over a victim's computer.
Microsoft released six security bulletins as part of its monthly patching cycle, three of which it deems "critical." The Redmond, Wash., software gives that rating to any security issue that could allow a malicious Internet worm to spread without any action required on the part of the user.
One bulletin addresses three flaws in Internet Explorer. Of all the issues Microsoft offered fixes for Tuesday, these put users at most risk of attack, said Oliver Friedrichs, senior manager at Symantec Security Response. Two other vulnerabilities, affecting the plug-and-play feature and printing in Windows, could also spell some trouble for users, he said.
An error in the way IE, Microsoft's widely used Web browser, handles JPEG images is especially alarming, according to Symantec. An attacker could commandeer a PC by crafting a malicious image and tricking the victim to look at it on, for example, a Web site or in an HTML e-mail, Microsoft said in its MS05-038 security bulletin.
"These vulnerabilities can be leveraged by malicious Web sites to install spyware, Trojan horses, bots, or other programs on an unsuspecting user's machine," Friedrichs said.
The other two IE flaws that Microsoft now has fixes for could also allow an attacker to take control of a user's computer. One relates to how the browser handles URLs related to a feature that lets users view file folders in IE. The other deals with the ability of IE to call on other parts of Windows and is similar to a problem patched last month.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.com ...
in other news, a snowball survived in hell today...
Yeah. But if I recall correctly, they'll let you download critical updates but not the optional updates.
Actually security updates are available to everyone, even if you don't pass the genuine advantage test.
won't let me get the new critical updates today.
Mac OSx Tiger x86 developer version has been leaked
and will supposedly run on any newer Intel box. Praise be!
Damn... It's gonna be sweet! (now to ditch my AMD box)
Back up your data frequently, and don't keep any sensitive data on your hard drive. Otherwise you'll be fine.
but the ms FUD regarding the "dominant platform" is just that, FUD.
FUD stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. How is it that there can be any FUD about Microsoft being the dominant platform? It is a known fact. I don't understand how you can say that is FUD.
there are much bigger "prizes" to be had on machines running unix and linux
That may be your opinion (I'm not sure what you mean by prizes), but it's no reason to beat up on Windows, which is the OS chosen by millions of people, and which Microsoft is trying earnestly to make as secure as possible. It's not like they're just ignoring this security issue - it's one of the top priorities for their company!
Try turning on automatic updates and see if that works. That's the word I get from the grapevine.
Funny how these type threads always flush out the MSFT bashers; seems to me they would be too busy basking in their superior systems to take time out of their busy productive schedules to comment to mere mortals using MSFT Windows.
Yeah I saw some pictures the other day...
This may be the next computing revolution, especially since I think it's only a matter of time until Microsoft has bigger issues than they do now....
Windows sucks..plain and simple.
LOL. Bingo.
Would you clear your throat and say that bit of should-be-common-sense again, louder?
Dan
Guess I wuz wrong. Sorry.
It's more logical that non-Windows users would have more free time to visit these threads since they aren't updating their systems all day long.
http://windowsupdate.62nds.com/ is a third party update sight for windows.
It makes the patches available shortly after MS.
Of course you should pay for windows (wink, wink), cheap versions are always on e-bay but you need to watch out for copied versions.
It won't let me update either. It says I'm running Linux!
Guess I wuz wrong. Sorry.
No need to apologize. This place is wonderful and even if things don't work it's still nice to have people that try to help :)
Yeah, but shouldn't users of superior OS's spend their time solving world hunger and modeling new energy sources and finding new prime numbers and inverting million by million arrays instead of gloating on every bash MSFT thread??? Seems sort of tacky to me.
It's also interesting how they just bash Windows, but can't seem to come up with any real reasons why Unix/Apple/etc. is "so much better". All you get from them are generalities like "it's more secure" or "it's way better".
Okaaay - whatever!
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