Patch Tavis Day

Yesterday was Patch Tuesday, or as I like to call it (hopefully for the last time) “Patch Tavis Day”.

Amongst the other vulnerabilities that Microsoft published in its regular round-up of security patches was a fix for the zero day vulnerability found by Tavis Ormandy in Windows XP’s Help and Support Center.

In my opinion, Ormandy irresponsibly disclosed the vulnerability before Microsoft had a chance to fix the problem, making it easy for cybercriminals to exploit the flaw and infect innocent users.

The good news is that now Microsoft has now issued a fix for the problem. But I bet they (and countless other internet users and industry observers) wish that the first that they had heard of this problem was when the patch was rolled-out, rather than…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter or Mastodon to read more of the exclusive content we post.

Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.