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Microsoft's Monthly Patch Won't Include Zero-Day Graphics Flaw Fix
Microsoft's monthly patch for November will contain three bulletin items rated "critical" and five "important" items.
According to the advance notification, the eight total security bulletins that will address an unknown number of vulnerabilities will target issues in Windows, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office, with every version of Windows being affected by two critical bulletins and every Internet Explorer version for the final critical item.
While this month's patch looks to be relatively straightforward, what's noteworthy is what it's missing, said Ross Barrett, senior manager of security engineering at Rapid7.
"There is frustration because according to the MSRC blog, this round of patches does not include a fix for the recently published, exploited in the wild Office vulnerability described in Microsoft Security Advisory 2896666," said Barrett in an e-mailed statement.
The Security Advisory in question, released yesterday by Microsoft, warned of a zero-day remote-code-execution vulnerability hitting Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 users who opened a malicious Web site or e-mailed link containing a corrupted TIFF file.
While it doesn't appear a permanent fix will be making it in time for Tuesday's patch release, the issue, which has hit victims in the Middle East, Asia and Europe, received a temporary solution in the form of a "Fix it," released today by Microsoft.
"We're working to develop a security update and we'll release it when ready," wrote Microsoft's Dustin Childs in a blog post. "In the meantime, the advisory includes a Fix it which prevents the attacks from succeeding and we recommend customers apply it to help protect their systems."
More information on November's Security Update will be available once the patch is released at around 10 a.m. PST on Tuesday.