October 2008 Microsoft Tuesday

It's Microsoft Tuesday!

All of you Wintel-heads have some work to do. Microsoft has released 11 security updates that allegedly close 20 security flaws in the various Windows operating systems and Office products.

For the first time, Microsoft has included a feature called the "exploitability index" that is supposed to give you an idea of how fast attackers might be able to compromise vulnerable systems. I don't know if that's going to be helpful to the home user, since other compensating controls like hardware & software firewalls, blocked ports, and locked down wireless could skew the index significantly in one direction or the other. Perhaps it's Microsoft's way of getting people to patch faster.

If you're smart, you'll follow my earlier recommendation and install Secunia's Personal Software Inspector, which covers things other than Microsoft products that will probably lead to you being compromised sooner rather than later. And it's FREE!