Weekend Vulnerability and Patch Report, November 12, 2010

Microsoft Windows & Office: This month's Patch Tuesday fixed more than 11 security flaws in Microsoft products. One patch fixes a highly critical vulnerability that could allow a cyber criminal to gain control of a user's computer simply by having the user view an email in Outlook's Preview Pane. We strongly recommend all home users make sure that automatic updates is turned on so these and other Microsoft patches will be downloaded and installed automatically. All other things being equal business computers should also have automatic updates turned on, except sometimes the IT department has to manage these updates differently.

Microsoft did not issue an update to fix a zero-day highly critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer that, according to KrebsOnSecurity.com, cyber criminals are exploiting to break into Windows computers.We suggest running the latest version of Firefox with the NoScript add-on as an alternative to IE.

Mac OS X: Apple has issued several updates to patch highly critical vulnerabilities in OS X. Mac users should install these. These are available on Apple's Downloads page and we urge all users to apply them. 

iTunes / QuickTime: Users should download and install iTunes 10.1 which includes Apple's QuickTime 7.6.8. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security though. Secunia has announced that a highly critical 0-day vulnerability has already been discovered in the new QuickTime version 7.6.8.

PayPal for iPhone: PayPal has issued an update fixing a relatively minor security vulnerability in it's iPhone app. We suggest users update to the latest version.

WordPress: For those of you with web sites coded in WordPress, Secunia has announced a number of security vulnerabilities in various WordPress plug-ins. Direct your web-masters to Secunia's web-site for more information.

If you are responsible for keeping your computer secure, this is for you. If someone else is responsible for keeping your computer secure, protect it by forwarding our Weekend Vulnerability and Patch Report to them and following up to make sure your computer has been patched.

Vulnerability management is a key element of cyber security management. Cyber criminals take over user computers by writing computer programs that "exploit" vulnerabilities in operating systems (Windows, Apple OS, etc) and application programs (Adobe Acrobat, Office, Flash, Java, etc). When software companies find a vulnerability, they will issue an update patch to fix the code running in their customer's computers.

The Weekend Vulnerability and Patch Report is intended to raise user awareness to cyber security challenges by alerting them to some of the week's important vulnerability news and updates.  

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