Microsoft issues 'critical' patch outside normal cycle

Microsoft will issue a patch for a "critical" security flaw in Windows, the company said Thursday. The patch comes outside of its normal monthly patching cycle due to the severity of the issue.

The vulnerability can result in a remote code execution, in which malicious attackers could take control of a user's computer to launch code.

According to Microsoft's bulletin, the vulnerability is found in Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008.

Microsoft will hold a Webcast at 1 p.m. PDT to address the issue.

Issuing patches outside of its monthly cycle is rare for Microsoft. The last time it happened was April 2007, according to a Microsoft representative.

[honker37]

Oh ya!!!! Now I remember why I went MAC!!! AND LOVING IT!!!!

[sythara]

Oh yeah!!!! Macs are the most perfect machine ever created with no security vulnerabilities at all.

guess again chief. Apple simply releases their fixes silently making sure it does not hit the news. Seriously, after reading posts by most of the mac users here I have come to a conclusion that mac users are so smug they love to smell their own farts.

[Hernys]

So you haven't installed any of the bazillion fixes Apple has released for OSX? (about 10X those released for Windows Vista and Windows XP together)
Would you please tell me your IP address? I'm running out of space locally.

[heavydevelopment]

OMG! This explains it. I LOVE the smell of my own farts. Now I know why.

[aMUSICsite]

Mac's have security updates too.

[Penguinisto]

True - just no active malware out for it.

[Gregg Pearson]

You can ALWAYS tell when an Apple product is going to loose or look bad for a CNET test. When the introduction has a disclaimer, that automatically indicates that CNET knows the Apple product is inferior or will look bad.
That always makes me wonder, "Is CNET just a mouth piece for Apple?"
As for myself, I have yet to see or use any Apple product that even begins to live up to its hype! No matter what Apple product you may be talking about, there is ALWAYS several competiting products that far exceed the Apple product performance.

[mbenedict]

@honker37

Do you love the Mac because Apple has more security issues than even Microsoft so far this year?

Read:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/06/Apple_gets_bruised_in_vulnerability_report_1.html

[Penguinisto]

He probably loves OSX because there has yet to be any widespread malware for it that didn't require the user to install it first.

[ZetaZeta_]

At least Microsoft is fixing security issues as soon as possible before they become a problem.

Saying, "Microsoft wants to fix their errors immediately before it becomes a problem? So that's why I don't use Microsoft products" sounds just a little bit foolish.

[Dalkorian]

Uh, did I misread something here? From the article ...

"According to Microsoft's bulletin, the vulnerability is found in Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008."

This "problem" affects everything from the newest version to a version that's 8 years old, so how is this "as soon as possible"? Considering fista is supposed to be a total re-write, I'd have to guess it's a fundamental design flaw that's been carried along for the last 8 years.

Hey, at least they did finally address the issue, right?

[edweirdness]

Has anyone else noticed the lengths that Microsoft is going to in order to bury the "Vista" brand association. Mow it's "windows", rather than "Windows Vista". This only adds to the confusion that consumers have when buying new systems that do not allow you a choice of operating system. Manufacturers and resellers who take the time to identify and offer a Linux based system should be primed for increased sales over the holidays. I can't count the number of laptops I've downgraded to XP (a considerable task) or switched to Linux (marginally easier and a whole lot cheaper).

[theantibush]

kinda like McCain and his Bush-brand prob : )

[rnieves1977]

theantibush - LMAO CLASSIC!

[theantibush]

Oh ya!!!! Now I remember why I went LINUX!!! AND LOVING IT!!!! **


**please pardon. I was at a Linux conference the other day and just now accidentally bumped my knee against my desk and this incompetent party line blurted out.

[Bewildered_Ronin]

Come on guys, take it easy on some of the Mac users. Most people use Macs specifically because they don't know much about computers. They like to tout commercial tag-lines and slogans that are untrue (Macs can't get viruses is another good one) because it makes it seem like they bought a Mac for reasons other than to be "cool." There's nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting to belong or wanting to seem cool, it's just when Mac users start stretching the truth that it ruffles the feathers of us that actually do know a bit about computers.

OS X has its advantages, native and embedded Post Script being one of them, and Windows has its advantages, namely having a much larger software library than Macs. I use both OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and Windows Vista. Leopard does crash more often and my Adobe apps often stop responding when trying to close them down, but I enjoy the interface (the dock is very helpful in setting up a work environment) and it can create a large, complicated PDF much faster than Windows. I use Vista for all my fun stuff, playing games, movies, browsing the web, and stuff like that.

Anyways, there's no need to be snarky. The Mac users typically are not power users. They are typically people that don't know how a computer works, don't care, and want a locked-in system that will (hopefully) break less than their Windows machine did. The funny thing is, if most people disabled half of the useless Startup junk by going into MSConfig, their machines would run just fine.

[rnieves1977]

It's only a matter of time before the "Mac's don't get Viruses" Virus attacks MACs on a global scale... it shall be epic.... EPIC I SAY!

[sting7k]

This guy is correct about everything.

[heavydevelopment]

High and mighty "I know something about computers" guy. You don't know don't know what you are talking about. Please give me one example of a Mac virus in the wild? Just one. Not a trojan or malware, but an honest for good Mac virus. There aren't any. Just like there aren't any Linux viruses. Hmmmm....I wonder if there is a correlation? Perhaps its OSX is built on the FreeBSD kernel? OSX is the blend of security and stability of linux with the ease of use desktop from Apple.

I'm not sure what sort of retarded Mac you may be running (if you even have a Mac), but rarely to I ever have any problems with my Mac Pro. And it's never, ever completely bombed out. On Windows XP that I have to use at work? Almost everyday. I am a web developer. I run a web server, MYSQL database server, graphics software, code development IDEs, iTunes (streaming through Simplify to my friends), and ripping movies with handbrake all at the same time on my Mac Pro dev machine at home--yeah you could say I'm a power user. Plus Apple is native 64bit as are most of the applications that are coming out for OSX (except for foot dragging Adobe and Photoshop, but that's what they get for thinking that Apple was going to keep supporting Carbon). I also know people with masters and doctorate degrees in computer science--many of them java developers--that have switched because it's FreeBSD with the Apple desktop. Games? That's what the PS3 is for....besides it looks much better on the 67" Samsung than the 30" Cinema Display....but if I wanted to, I could Boot Camp (no VMWare overhead) into an install of Windows XP.

Yes, there are people that buy Macs because "they just work" and because its "cool". But there are computer professionals in the know that have made the switch because its just better AND it plays with OS agnostic, open source software well...thanks to the FreeBSD kernel.

So stick that in your Windows pipe and smoke it.

[Penguinisto]

@heavydevelopment:

To be fair, there were about four Linux viruses or so... 'course, none of them affected more than a small group of machines, and the last one (Lion?) became useless sometime shortly after its release in 2001.

None for OSX though. Just a trojan or two that required full admin privileges (IIRC), and a user dumb enough to install the things.

[Bewildered_Ronin]

@ heavydevelopment:
You're the exception to the rule. If you bothered to actually read, you'd notice that I said "most" users, not all. My Mac that crashes: G5 Mac Pro Intel dual C2D 2.4Ghz w/ 4GB 800MHz DDR2 RAM. My previous G4 crashed all the time, especially when I first installed Panther. Also, Leopard has crashed more than my Vista comp, but that's only about 4 crashes over the past year. My Vista box has crashed once. Where the big difference comes is force-quitting applications. I have to force-quit my Adobe apps all the time because they freeze up on OS X 10.5. I don't have this problem anywhere near as often on Vista. I don't know why XP crashes all the time for you. My last box ran XP for 5 years with maybe 3 crashes. Personally, I think many are either running too many programs in the background creating conflicts or they are flat out lying.

Get a PS3? Why? I enjoy playing games with the m&kb, thank you very much. And there are many games that simply will not, do not, or cannot come to consoles. (Dawn of War II) Besides, I don't have a 67" or any other big screen TV. I don't watch much TV so it doesn't make sense for me to invest a lot of money in a TV, and what I do want to watch I can often see streamed on the web. (Daily Show) Also, games look much better on the PC than on consoles.

As for a Virus:
Experts at SophosLabs?, Sophos's global network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have announced the discovery of the first virus for the Apple Mac OS X platform. The virus, named OSX/Leap-A (also known as OSX/Oompa-A) spreads via instant messaging systems.

Once again, heavydevelopment, you are the exception to the Mac market. The vast majority of programmers out there use Linux and laugh at the notion of using a Mac. Not saying that people don't use Macs for coding, but the vast majority do not, and that's a fact that your rude and arrogant tone can't refute.

I'm not on the "Windows pipe" but you obviously are on the Mac pipe, pal, and it's causing some irritability. That's usually a sign of addiction. I do use Macs on a regular basis (whether you believe me or not) to run graphic apps (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc) and I love OS X for what it is and for many of the small things its desktop environment offers (Dashboard is a really great idea and fantastically implemented, unlike Vista's Sidebar), but I hate when Mac folks spread lies about Windows or Linux. Windows isn't perfect and there are legitimate things to dislike about it, so there's no need to lie and make things up.

[Penguinisto]

I find it funny that the MSFT apologists are trying to point out how OSX is oh-so-vulnerable... and yet no one in that chior can point out any active malware for it (at least nothing that doesn't require the user to be brain-dead and install any).

Soemone in that pile said "It's only a matter of time", and this is true. OTOH, judging by history so far, coupled with OSX' more secure internal architecture, I know that I can safely avoid having to buy A/V software for OSX for at least five years.

[Bewildered_Ronin]

True, OS X is built in a much more secure manner, but the problem comes that Apple drags its feet, moans and whines whenever it has to patch anything security related. They can get by for now, thankfully, but it will become a serious marketing problem when/if Macs do eventually become prevalent to attacks. One of the more difficult things will be to get Mac users to secure up, as that is one of the biggest problem with most of the layman users of Windows.

[gslv]

This Wednesday morning I found my Windows computer stuck and unresponsive. I had to do a quick power off. Hopefully this prevented any bug from being saved. But the system was thrown off, had to repair some things. Does this fix sound like a repair for this new threat, if it was from the outside?

[Newrulz2008]

There's too few businesses running MAC, so no one cares enough about them to worry about hacking them. It's the crazy, pimple-faced dweebs that have a boner for Microsoft who have absolutely NOTHING BETTER in their lives than to sit around and masturbate over ways to hack Windows based devices. The truth be known these A-Holes cause more damage to America than the so-called Islamic Terrorists.

[gslv]

My understanding is that Apple system is designed so that outsiders can't execute code in it, so viruses are impossible. Is that right?