Tuesday, February 11 will see five bulletins and associated patches from Microsoft. According to the advance notification, the patches will affect Windows, .NET and security software.
As usual, Dustin Childs posted an overview of this month’s patches over at the MSRC blog.
This month’s Ouch! newsletter (warning: PDF) from SANS provides a basic overview of malware: what it is, where it comes from, who creates it, and how it infects your computer. A good read for anyone who has wondered what malware is and why it’s a problem.
Steve Ballmer’s replacement as CEO of Microsoft is Satya Nadella, formerly in charge of the company’s enterprise and cloud products. Perhaps more interestingly, Nadella asked Bill Gates to get more involved in the company, and Gates agreed: he is stepping down as Chairman of the Board, and is expected to provide guidance for the company’s technology development.
Another new version of Firefox slid quietly off the production line yesterday. Version 27 improves interactivity with certain social web sites, and fixes a few bugs, including a dozen security vulnerabilities.
As usual, the only announcement of the new version was in the form of a post on the Mozilla Blog, which fails to mention that the post is actually about a new version of Firefox. The official release notes for the new version are as usual a total mess, barely even mentioning the new version identifier.
Yesterday Adobe released a new version of Flash (12.0.0.44) that addresses a critical security vulnerability. There is some evidence that the vulnerability is already being exploited in the wild, so everyone should update their browsers ASAP.
As usual, Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 8.1 will receive the new Flash version via Windows Update, and Chrome will update to the new Flash automatically.
Opera 19.0.1326.59 was released yesterday. Apparently the browser engine forming the basis of the browser (WebKit, also the basis of Google Chrome) since version 15 was updated.
A new version of the Chrome web browser was released by Google yesterday. The announcement for version 32.0.1700.107 does not list any changes.
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