Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/03/05/ms_patch_tuesday_march/
Patch Tuesday will leave F1 hole unpatched
Light spring sprinkle follows deluge
Posted in Security, 5th March 2010 10:40 GMT
Microsoft is planning just two bulletins next week, covering vulnerabilities rated only as "important", as part of this month's Patch Tuesday.
The scheduled updates address a total of eight security flaws in Microsoft Office and desktop versions of Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista and Windows 7). March's modest patch batch contrasts with February's monster haul of 13 updates, five of which were rated as critical. The whole bundle tackled 26 security flaws.
As usual details of what the updates fix will have to wait until next week, but that hasn't stopped security firms making educated guesses about what's in store and what security fixes remain pending.
Alan Bentley, VP International at Lumension Security, said: "From what we’ve seen, it doesn’t appear that the bulletins released will address all of the issues that are in the wild."
Back at the start of the week a VBScript issue involving Internet Explorer and older versions of Windows made headlines because it meant vulnerable users were potentially exposed to attack providing they can be tricked into pressing the F1 key.
Microsoft confirmed the potential problem, which it said it was investigating, adding that it's seen no evidence of the bug been harnessed in actual real-world attacks. ®