Patch Tuesday release includes 13 bulletins

26 vulnerabilities featured in sizeable update set.

After a relatively quiet January, administrators are faced with a hefty workload this week as

Microsoft

‘s monthly Patch Tuesday security release featured 13 updates covering 26 separate issues with

Windows

and other

Microsoft

software.

In five bulletins labelled ‘Critical’, remote code execution problems with TCP/IP, SMB clients,

Windows Shell Handler

,

DirectShow

and

ActiveX

are all fixed. Of the remaining eight, one, in the once-ubiquitous

Paint

, is labelled only ‘moderate’, despite also allowing remote code execution, while those described as ‘important’ include a fix for six separate issues with

PowerPoint

, and other updates for the

Windows Kernel

,

Kerberos

,

SMB Server

, the

Client-Server Runtime Subsystem

, the

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

system, and

Microsoft Office

, this last issue again allowing remote code execution and treated as more serious by other security watchers including

SANS

, who graded it as ‘Critical’ for clients along with the

PowerPoint

and

Paint

problems.

There were no accompanying updates from

Adobe

this month, as its fixes are scheduled for quarterly release and last month saw a bumper crop, but the company behind

Flash

and the world’s most popular PDF viewer has come under increasing fire for its record on vulnerabilities of late, with many new year reports predicting an increase in the growth of malware using PDF and

Flash

exploits.

Another software giant,

Oracle

, announced an out-of-band update to fix some serious security holes in its

WebLogic

solution last week – details can be found

here

.

Microsoft

‘s security bulletins can be found

here

, with a summary from

SANS


here

. Comment on the release can be found at

The Register


here

, with more on

Adobe

‘s woes

here

and details of the

Oracle

update

here

.

Posted on 10 February 2010 by

Virus Bulletin