Have you been jonesing for Microsoft Patch Day like a kitty anticipating the next hit of that sweet, sweet catnip? Ah… probably not. Nonetheless, Patch Day has arrived, so run off and snort your latest dose of security updates now.
Microsoft’s July bulletin summary highlights nine security bulletins, which fix 16 vulnerabilities in various products including Windows, Office, Internet Explorer (IE), Sharepoint Server, and some of their development tools. They rate three of the bulletins as Critical, and the rest as Important.
The “headlining” issue this month is Microsoft’s fix for the zero day XML Core Services vulnerability. I first warned you about this unpatched code-execution vulnerability last month. In short, if an attacker can entice you to a malicious web site, he could leverage this flaw to force malware on your computer. Microsoft released a “FixIt” workaround for this flaw, but today’s update is the real patch. At the very least, I recommend you download, test, and deploy this update as quickly as you can. Though I’d also recommend you grab all the other updates as well, especially the Critical ones.
I’ll share more details about these issues, and how to fix them, in consolidated alerts I’ll post here shortly. — Corey Nachreiner, CISSP (@SecAdept)