September Patch Tuesday delivers critical updates to IE and Adobe Flash

Microsoft traditionally has a large patch release for September. This September's Patch Tuesday is no exception with 14 updates, seven rated as critical, seven rated as important, altogether resolving a total of 50 reported vulnerabilities. Unlike last month, September brings a zero-day vulnerability with the update MS16-104. Unfortunately, this patch to IE also includes a publicly reported security issue. So this month we have a number of Microsoft updates on the "Patch Now" list including: MS16-104, MS16-115, MS16-116 and MS16-117. And the update to the Windows kernel with MS16-111 may make some administrators pause for a little more testing due to the core system files updated.

You can read more here.

LinkBait: Interesting reads for the month of August

Each month, I try to (with a little help from my friends) compile a list of interesting links about application compatibility and general platform issues.

Here is my suggested reading list for this month's "packaging canon" 

Platform News

Windows Redstone 1 is now known as the Windows 10 Anniversary Update and is a major update to Windows and brings other upgrades:

• .Net Framework 4.6.2 has been released
• SQL Server 2014 SP2 has been released with many changes and a new Feature Pack
• SQL Server 2016 has been released with many new features
• Windows Server 2016 and SCCM 2016 to be launched at the Ignite Conference in Atlanta on 

September 26-30

• Windows Redstone 2 is already in testing. It and Redstone 3 are due in 2017
• Why UAC in reality has only two settings, On or Off
• Why sharing a folder in Explorer grants full permission on the share to everyone
• New tool for refreshing windows 10. It replaces missing functionality that was part of Windows 8
• Security implications of upgrading to Windows 10
• Upgrade to Windows 10 for free after the deadline

Install News

• WiX v3.10.3 has been released
• Updated prebuilt virtual machines from Microsoft with latest available operating systems for VMware, Hyper-V, Virtualbox & Parallels

Browser News

Edge browser now supports extensions, has pinnable tabs and notifications

RC4 encryption is now disabled in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer 11

Other News

• Follow the Olympics in Outlook with new “Interesting Calendar”
• Yahoo! Messenger has been redesigned with a new UI and received its first update in 4 years
• Windows Holographic experience looks interesting
• Anyone (in US or Canada with $3000) can now buy a hololens

June Patch Tuesday delivers five critical updates and (hopefully) the end of QuickTime

A few months ago, we saw the end of Oracle JAVA Plugin support, and now we see the end of QuickTime with the call to remove it from your systems. If only we could get rid of Adobe Flash. For this June Patch Tuesday, we won’t see an update to Adobe Flash from Microsoft, but we may see an update from Adobe later this month. With 16 updates for June, we already have enough to worry about. Microsoft has released five critical updates and the remaining 11 patches are rated as important, covering a total of 44 vulnerabilities. This month looks like a pretty straightforward update cycle, with some very targeted updates from Microsoft which should have a low to moderate risk for deployment.

You can also read about Patch Tuesday from Chris Goettl's blog found here.  Chris also products a great infographic each month that summarises Patch Tuesday that is definitely worth a look.

You can read more about this Patch Tuesday on the Computer World column found here.

Critical updates for IE, Edge and Flash for this May Patch Tuesday

Historically, May has been a big month for Microsoft updates. This May, we see 16 updates, covering all versions of Windows, IE and Edge as well as an update for Adobe Flash player.

With eight updates rated as critical and the remaining patches rated as important, Microsoft seems to have adopted a new clustering approach to patches. We have seen pairings of IE and Edge in the past, but this month we see core components (VBscript and JScript) linked with browser updates. In addition, we also have kernel updates linked to kernel mode driver updates (MS16-060 and MS16-061). We are also missing MS16-063! And, this month we also get the benefit of a nice looking infographic from Shavlik.

You can read more about this ComputerWorld article here. 

Critical updates for IE, Edge and Adobe Flash for April Patch Tuesday

This April, Microsoft has released another large batch of Windows updates with six rated as critical and the remaining seven rated as important.

Although there has been a large amount of hype relating to the latest security scare (BadLock), the real issue this month is the Adobe Player vulnerability addressed in MS16-050. Both Microsoft browsers require urgent updates due to more memory corruption issues (MS16-037 and MS16-038). I am not quite sure that Microsoft does this deliberately, but it seems that every month, the second to last update rated as important could be considered a little “worrisome.” This month it's MS16-048, which updates a key windows system (that handles logins) that may require some additional testing before production deployments.

Here’s the link to Shavlik’s helpful Patch Tuesday infographic that outlines the risks and exploitability of all these patches.

You can read more about this ComputerWorld article here.