For all us tech enthusiasts, Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday is a day to look forward to. Our PC’s probably look forward to it too, it’s like Christmas to them, where gifts come in the form of bug fixes, security patches, and overall stability improvements.
Today is no different, it’s the second Tuesday of the month and there’s a plethora of updates available via Windows Update for Windows, Office, and other Microsoft products. The most critical of these updates are for Internet Explorer, which patches 37 vulnerabilities that allowed attackers to remotely gain information about a target PC such as its local pathnames, intranet hostnames and intranet IP addresses by looking at error codes. Another 36 vulnerabilities for Internet Explorer that allowed for Remote Code Execution were also patched. Nasty stuff, you’ll want to install these updates ASAP.
Adobe Flash – which has been built into Windows since Windows 8 – has also received a critical update. The patch also blocks Remote Code Execution that attackers would use by hosting a malicious webpage with Flash content.
Furthermore, there are important updates for .NET framework that can be equally dangerous if left unpatched, as well as updates for Microsoft Lync, Excel, OneDrive, PowerPoint, and Word among others. Do yourself a favor, whether you’re on your personal computer at home or managing enterprise computers, update your computers, because the damages that may result from not doing so may cost you more than the effort it takes to update.
Further reading: Microsoft, Patch Tuesday, Security, Windows
