First “Patch Tuesday” of 2012

In the first “Patch Tuesday” of 2012, Microsoft is releasing seven security bulletins to address software issues an attacker could use to remotely exploit and take control of infected Windows systems. Patch Tuesday occurs on the second Tuesday of each month and on that day Microsoft releases security patches to fix vulnerabilities found in their products.

The following table summarizes the security bulletins for this month in order of severity.

Bulletin ID	Maximum Severity Rating and Vulnerability Impact	Restart Requirement	Affected Software
Bulletin 1	Critical Remote Code Execution	Requires restart	Microsoft Windows
Bulletin 2	Important Security Feature Bypass	Requires restart	Microsoft Windows
Bulletin 3	Important Remote Code Execution	May require restart	Microsoft Windows
Bulletin 4	Important Elevation of Privilege	Requires restart	Microsoft Windows
Bulletin 5	Important Remote Code Execution	May require restart	Microsoft Windows
Bulletin 6	Important Information Disclosure	Requires restart	Microsoft Windows
Bulletin 7	Important Information Disclosure	May require restart	Microsoft Developer Tools and Software

Table 1 – Table Summarizes the Security Bulletins

We are hoping this month’s patches with address the Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS or the BEAST that seemed to have been canceled last month due a third-party vendor who reported compatibility issues with the patch

Updates for other security issues are available from the following locations:

Security updates are available from Microsoft Download Center. You can find them most easily by doing a keyword search for “security update”.
Updates for consumer platforms are available from Microsoft Update.
You can obtain the security updates offered this month on Windows Update, from Download Center on Security and Critical Releases ISO CD Image files. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 913086.

If you are interested in learning more on how to improve security and optimize your IT infrastructure, and would like to participate with other IT Pros on security topics check out the IT Pro Security Community.

Also strengthening its software is Adobe, which on Jan. 10th released critical updates for Adobe Reader X and Adobe Acrobat X and Google, which recently released Chrome version 16.0.9212.75, fixing three high-priority bugs in the Web browser.