Microsoft Advisory Summaries

Microsoft Security Bulletins Summary - February 2005

This month brings 12 Microsoft Security Bulletins, mostly of the Critical persuasion.

Sharepoint’s growing success certainly makes it more of a target, however, the flaw described in the alert is not likely to spawn a widespread worm. The PNG buffer overflow (MS05-009) affects Windows Media Player and Messenger; given the recent Bropia outbreak and attention, expect this to get some traction as a vector. Fans of the DCOM/RPC worms will take note of the update for COM services (MS04-012), which makes the famous MS03-026 and 039 obsolete. And as always, don’t discount the IE rollup, again one of the most important advisories in the monthly release.

From a malware perspective, this is a very interesting month. Of the dozen vulnerabilities there are 3 that make for reasonable Internet worm material (004, 010, 011) and 7 that address client side attacks (005, 008, 009, 012, 013, 014, 015) - the malicious websites and email that make up a growing portion of phishing, Trojan delivery, and mass mailer attacks (think Bofra). 

These bulletins cross a number of products and operating systems, be sure to read the bulletins to ensure compatibility before pushing the updates to production boxes.

The Excel spreadsheet and CSV versions of this month's summarized bulletin.

The advisory is summarized below: