One of my favorite e-magazines is Windows Secrets (http://windowssecrets.com). This is a free and for-pay newsletter that gets to the bottom of many Windows (and other) issues. Windows Secrets is also the voice of reason when deciding whether to run a Microsoft/Windows security, or other, update. As you know, many updates issued by Microsoft have the Windows community recipients beta testing half-assed solutions to serious issues. Almost always, the intrepid team at Windows Secrets has advised on the side of caution, having recipients wait until all testing had been done and showing issues so we could make informed decisions.
So, when Brian Livingston of Windows Secrets advises everyone to install the new MS patch without hesitation, you know it’s serious. Brian states that this is the first time in 1-1/2 years that Microsoft has released an emergency fix outside of its monthly “Patch Tuesday” cycle.
The patch is found in Security bulletin MS08-067 (patch 958644).
Susan Bradley, Windows Secrets’ contributing editor who covers Microsoft patches, has written up an article with a description of the latest situation. You can find the article here (http://windowssecrets.com/comp/081024/#patch0). Please take a moment to read the article and if you don’t have automatic update downloads installed on your PC you should take a moment to enable it. Remember, you have the choice to have the updates downloaded to your PC but wait for your approval to install, as opposed to just downloading and installing or not downloading at all.
Susan has a list of all the versions of downloads available for each type of Windows platform you may be using. If you don’t have Windows Updates enabled on your machine, you can find the manual patches here.
There is another Web drive-by threat currently making an appearance, but I’ll wait until there’s more information before posting here.