Posted on 10/12/2004 2:45:09 PM PDT by Redcloak
Microsoft on Tuesday published 10 software security advisories, warning Windows users and corporate administrators of 22 new flaws that affect the company's products.
The advisories, and patches published with the bulletins, range from an "important" flaw affecting only Microsoft Windows NT Server to a collection of eight security holes, including three rated "critical," that leave Internet Explorer open to attack. Microsoft's highest severity rating for software flaws is its "critical" ranking, while "important" is considered slightly less severe.
One flaw, in Microsoft Excel, even affects Apple Computer's Mac OS X.
The abundance of flaws could leave corporate PCs vulnerable to attack if administrators are not able to patch quickly. A similar situation occurred in April, when Microsoft published seven advisories detailing 20 flaws. While one security hole stood out among those 20--and led to the widespread Sasser worm--there are no standouts in the current gaggle of goofs.
"Our challenge is trying to guess what the criminals are going to attack," said Stephen Toulouse, security program manager for Microsoft's security response team. "The guidance we are giving in general is to treat the critical ones first."
A single computer would not be vulnerable to all the flaws, Toulouse added.
Oliver Friedrichs, senior director of Symantec's security response center, said three vulnerabilities could lead to a Sasser-like worm, but the danger is lessened by the fact that the vulnerable services are not started by default on most versions of Windows. These flaws are related to three network protocols that are not generally activated on Windows computers: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), and Network Dynamic Data Exchange (NetDDE)
(Excerpt) Read more at news.zdnet.com ...
Happy, happy, joy, joy
Happy, happy, joy, joy
Happy, happy, joy, joy, joy, joy, joy
Wow, wish I could figure out how to become a gazillionaire by producing a product that hasn't worked for 7 or 8 years. Everytime MS fixes one security issue another two pop up....but the bucks keep rolling in....what a great business!!!
I just downloaded and installed service pack II the other day. Damn thing messed up my mp3's (the one's I actually PAID FOR) to where they won't play on winamp or their stupid player.
This crap is getting old.
My suggestion to you (not trying to sound elitest) is try an Apple. I've had 2 years of no problem computing since moving to Apple.
A friend of ours had to uninstall SP2 because her bank's online services wouldn't work with it. The uninstall then left a mess on her computer; including turning the messenger service back on so she, and her children, could enjoy all of that wonderful, pornographic messenger spam they'd been missing.
I patched my machines. It took under a minute. No problem.
Thanks, Microsoft!
Which is why I have not loaded SP2. Mostly quit on IE. Firefox from mozilla works great - loads a bit faster that IE. Got me firewall at whatnot
Who needs hackers with Microsoft providing the same service?
I was also victimized by the sevice pack II. It took a week of running in safe mode and an XP reinstallation but I think I have it straightened out. I ended up uninstalling the service pack. I'll trust my own virus protection and firewall till microsoft gets thier crap fixed.
Funny that announcements of their security vulnerabilities aren't celebrated...
Same here. I've updated at least 10 separate machines with SP2 and all of the fixes since then, along with all my relatives updating theirs, and I've not seen one problem.
It doesn't matter who makes it all software requires updates.
Oh good grief. I'm so tired of all these bleepin' patches. Why oh why doesn't MS create a decent product? And please, don't start with the "Mac" etc. stuff. I have to use MS because of software I use, which only runs on MS.
Funny that announcements of their security vulnerabilities aren't celebrated...
Not really. Once you get a reputation for having buggy, non-secure software, it takes a long time to overcome that.
Microsoft's reputation is well deserved. They will have to write very good software for years to overcome it.
Someone remind me what year Safe Computing is supposed to be here. I know it's supposed to happen sometime, because Bill Gates himself told us about it. I can hardly wait.
Nearly every machine I have seen with a problem with SP2 turned out to be infested with adware/spyware from people surfing where they don't belong. Here is the patch MS created to get you past TVMedia which is a very annoying adware/spyware program.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?amp;displaylang=en.&familyid=65875203-CF1B-4D32-8F32-E00D004659F6&displaylang=en
After SP2 upgrades, I have seen that users machines are remaining clean of these adware programs and are not being overrun by adware/spyware/popups/trojans anymore.
I have tried Firefox for about a year now and it eventually locks up to where i have to kill it two or three times a day.
Tried Linux but there are no spreadsheet programs that will do the complex accounting I need and won't work with our ERP software.
Have a few Apples scattered about but the users usually wind up using Remote Desktop Client to connect to out Terminal Services Server to use Outlook for our office calendaring, scheduling, and shared contacts.
What works well for one may not meet the demands of your employer. Most people I help are not competent to use any PC regardless of OS.
"Why oh why doesn't MS create a decent product?"
Microsoft makes great products. Even with every hacker in the world trying to destroy them, they continue to excell.
I've been running Microsoft products on hundreds of computers for 22 years. The combination of features, price, software and security is far better than anything else on the market.
I make automatic backups of my sytems daily, but have never needed to restore anything because of security or software failures.
There is one thing I do that I find useful. I set my updates to manual. I have Windows notify me but I do the downloading and installation. It seems to work better than automatic updates. I'm not sure why, but I seem to have no problems when others complain.
ping
Common sense tells you that MS products are attacked more than others because they are the dominant applications. The more dominant, the more hackers are interested in breaking it.
If Mack's were as dominant we would be talking about them.
I refuse to use a Betamax when VCR's are the norm. The same goes with operating systems and anything else.
MS will never be spared attacks as long as they are on top. It goes with the territory, and it is everyones responsibility to prevent them, not just MS.
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