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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/12/dec_patch_tuesday/

Microsoft Santa gifts you with 5 critical fixes in Xmas Patch Tuesday

Still using Word? You'll want to read this

By John Leyden

Posted in Security, 12th December 2012 17:02 GMT

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December's Patch Tuesday brought seven bulletins from Microsoft, five of which cover critical security vulnerabilities.

A critical update for MS Word (MS12-079) is rated by security watchers as the most important of the batch. A flaw in Rich Text Format (RTF) processing poses a severe risk because Microsoft Outlook automatically displays the malicious text in the Preview Pane - without requiring user interaction.

Another critical update (MS12-077) tackles security bugs in Internet Explorer 9 and 10, and creates a risk of drive-by download attacks involving tricking users into visiting websites contaminated with malicious code.

A further critical update fixes a vulnerability in Windows file-handling component while the remaining items on the critical list grapple with vulnerabilities in Windows kernel-mode drivers involving font handling and security bugs in Microsoft Exchange, arising from the inclusion of buggy versions of Oracle Outside In file conversion software.

A graphical overview of the patches can be found in a post by the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Centre blog here [1]. Microsoft's bulletin is here [2].

Trustwave SpiderLabs has written a blog post [3] comparing this week's patch batch to different brands of beer. IE updates are compared to Guinness Draught while the remote code execution in kernel-mode drivers is racked alongside 120 Minute IPA.

Microsoft also used Patch Tuesday to publish a new whitepaper [4] on defensive techniques against "Pass the Hash" attacks. "Pass the Hash" is a technique used by attackers after the initial exploit, in which they use the stored password hashes to gain access to other machines in a local network. Such stepping stone attacks are standard network hacking practice, so defending against them using better configuration practices makes a lot of sense.

The seven bulletins in December bring the total count for 2012 to 83, a significant reduction on the 100 bulletins in 2011 and even more from the 2010 count, which ended with 106 bulletins.

Adobe recently began co-ordinating its security patch releases with Microsoft's output. Tuesday offered security updates to Adobe ColdFusion 10 (and earlier) and Flash Player. The Flash update [5] is configuration dependent, but can be critical, while the Cold Fusion security patch [6] is given the lower status of "important". ®