Microsoft releases two security bulletins

Microsoft released two out of band security bulletins today – one Internet Explorer bulletin and one Visual Studio bulletin. The IE issue is rated critical and the Visual Studio patch is rated moderate.

Eric Schultze, CTO of Shavlik Technologies said: “I recommend installing the IE patch as soon as possible as it helps protect against a flaw being demonstrated at Blackhat tomorrow (Wednesday) that might allow an attacker to bypass the killbits that were set to protect a machine against unsafe ActiveX controls. Failing to patch for this issue is like purposely uninstalling 8 prior IE patches – not something you want to do. Patch this one right away.”

Vulnerabilities in Visual Studio Active Template Library could allow remote code execution

This security update addresses several privately reported vulnerabilities in the public versions of the Microsoft Active Template Library (ATL) included with Visual Studio. This security update is specifically intended for developers of components and controls. Developers who build and redistribute components and controls using ATL should install the update provided in this bulletin and follow the guidance provided to create, and distribute to their customers, components and controls that are not vulnerable to the vulnerabilities described in this security bulletin.

This security bulletin discusses vulnerabilities that could allow remote code execution if a user loaded a component or control built with the vulnerable versions of ATL.

Cumulative security update for Internet Explorer

As a defense-in-depth measure, this Internet Explorer security update helps mitigate known attack vectors within Internet Explorer for those components and controls that have been developed with vulnerable versions of Microsoft Active Template Library (ATL).

This security update also resolves three privately reported vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. These vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

This security update is rated Critical for Internet Explorer 5.01 and Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1, running on supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000; Critical for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8 running on supported editions of Windows XP; Critical for Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 running on supported editions of Windows Vista; Moderate for Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8 running on supported editions of Windows Server 2003; and Moderate for Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 running on supported editions of Windows Server 2008.

The security update addresses these vulnerabilities by modifying the way that Internet Explorer handles objects in memory and table operations.