As it does on the second Tuesday of every month, Microsoft celebrated "Patch Tuesday" this week. Perhaps in an attempt to keep us all extra safe on Valentine's Day, the software giant went all out, issuing fixes for 57 flaws, making this one of its biggest security updates in recent memory.
Jonathan Ness, who leads the Microsoft Security Response Center engineering team, notes that this update includes twelve "security bulletins" which address 52 common vulnerabilities and exposures. Five of the bulletins have a severity rating of "critical" and seven are deemed "important." This means that they address exploitable issues, ones that could cause quite a headache if left unpatched. You better get your mouse pointer to that good ol' "Update" button, stat! Affected Microsoft products run the gamut: Windows, Internet Explorer, Office and more.
The Verge's Adrianne Jeffries notes that while this month's security update is particulary huge, it's not breaking any records for Microsoft. The company's all-time biggest update fixed 64 bugs.
So, who is busy helping Microsoft close up its security holes? None other than its arch nemesis, Google. In fact, Microsoft acknowledges that 32 of the 57 items addressed in Tuesday's update were reported by Google engineers Gynvael Coldwind and Mateusz "j00ru" Jurczyk.
Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.