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Weekend Vulnerability and Patch Report, December 31, 2010

The following software updates were released last week. Citadel strongly recommends that readers upgrade these programs on their computers.

No upgrades were announced last week for popular home or SOHO (Small Office Home Office) software programs.

Important Vulnerabilities.

Microsoft Internet Explorer Vulnerability: As we reported last week, Microsoft has warned in a security advisory that an exploit now exists for the critical security vulnerability in Internet Explorer that we wrote about recently.The exploit runs remotely over the Internet, compromising a user's system and stealing sensitive information. The vulnerability has been confirmed in all versions of Internet Explorer, including IE 7 and 8. The exploit for this vulnerability gets around two of the key security defenses built into Windows Vista and Windows 7. We suggest running the latest version of Firefox with the NoScript add-on as an alternative to IE. 

If you are responsible for keeping your computer secure, our weekly report is for you. We strongly urge you to take action to keep your workstation secure.

 

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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