#microsoft

Today we published the February 2014 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. We answered seven questions on air, with the majority of questions focusing on the MSXML bulletin (MS14-005) and the revision to Security Advisory 2915720. One question that was not answered on air has been included on the Q&A page.

In addition to today being the security update release, February 11 is officially Safer Internet Day for 2014. This year, we’re asking folks to Do 1 Thing to stay safer online. While you may expect my “Do 1 Thing” recommendation would be to apply security updates, I’m guessing that for readers of this blog, that request would be redundant.

Update as of February 10, 2014 We are adding two updates to the February release. There will be Critical-rated updates for Internet Explorer and VBScript in addition to the previously announced updates scheduled for release on February 11, 2014. These updates have completed testing and will be included in tomorrow’s release.

Today we’re publishing the January 2014 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. We answered 16 questions in total, with the majority of questions focusing on the Dynamics AX bulletin (MS14-004), the update for Microsoft Word (MS14-001) and the re-release of the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 updates provided through MS13-081.

Unspecified vulnerability in the MySQL Server component in Oracle MySQL 5.5.33 and earlier and 5.6.13 and earlier allows remote authenticated users to affect availability via unknown vectors related to Partition.

In January, there are those who like to make predictions about the upcoming year. I am not one of those people. Instead, I like to quote Niels Bohr who said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” However, I can say without a doubt that change is afoot in 2014.

Today we released four security bulletins addressing six CVE’s. All four bulletins have a maximum severity rating of Important. We hope that the table below helps you prioritize the deployment of the updates appropriately for your environment. Bulletin Most likely attack vector Max Bulletin Severity Max exploit-ability rating Likely first 30 days impact Platform mitigations and key notes MS14-002(NDProxy, a kernel-mode driver) Attacker able to run code at a low privilege level inside an application sandbox exploits this vulnerability to elevate privileges to SYSTEM.

Apache Santuario XML Security for Java before 1.5.6, when applying Transforms, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory consumption) via crafted Document Type Definitions (DTDs), related to signatures.

Today we provide advance notification for the release of four bulletins for January 2014. All bulletins this month are rated Important in severity and address vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Office, and Dynamics AX. The update provided in MS14-002 fully addresses the issue first described in Security Advisory 2914486. We have only seen this issue used in conjunction with a PDF exploit in targeted attacks and not on its own.

Today we’re publishing the December 2013 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. We answered 17 questions in total, with the majority of questions focusing on the Graphics Component bulletin (MS13-096), Security Advisory 2915720 and Security Advisory 2905247. We also wanted to note a new blog on the Microsoft Security Blog site on the top cyber threat predications for 2014.