As expected, today’s Patch Day has a Windows theme, since all of Microsoft’s security bulletins affect Windows or components that ship with it. More importantly, most of the updates primarily affect modern versions of Windows, such as Windows Vista, 7, or Server 2008; only one of the Important bulletins affect older versions of Windows.
A remote code execution flaw in the Windows TCP/IP stack is, by far, the worst flaw this batch of security updates fixes. By sending a stream of specially crafted UDP packets, an attacker could exploit this flaw to gain complete control of a Windows Vista, 7, or Server 2008 computer. UDP packets on any port would work. If you allow any UDP packets through your firewall, attackers could leverage this flaw to pop your computer. I highly recommend you apply Microsoft’s Windows updates as soon as you can, especially if you run a more recent version of Windows.
You can learn more about today’s updates in Microsoft’s November summary bulletin. As is normally the case with Microsoft updates, you should probably test the patches before deploying them in your production network — especially the ones that affect server software.
I’ll post the more detail, consolidated Windows alert here, shortly. Stay tuned. – Corey Nachreiner, CISSP