OK, Once Again – Who Doesn’t Learn from Their Mistakes?

Yes, you guessed it. It’s Microsoft! Just announced on ITWire, this month’s day that you rue Patch Tuesday will be replete with a number of fixes not seen in awhile.

Already on tap are 13, most of them listed as critical, and who knows, there could be another five by the time Tuesday rolls around.

Yes, it’s nearly time for Microsoft’s monthly spray of security fixes, and there’s going to be plenty of patches for system administrators and individual users to apply.

A total of 13 bulletins have been pre-announced. Eight are rated critical, and the remaining five are important.  Twelve of the bulletins affect Windows itself, and all currently supported versions of Windows (including Server Core installations of Server 2008) are affected by multiple bulletins.

The planned updates include fixes for the SMB vulnerability in Vista and Windows Server 2008, and the FTP vulnerabilities in Internet Information Services (IIS) versions 5.0, 5.1, 6.0 and 7.0.

Although the latter was revealed early in September, Microsoft did not have a fix in time for that month’s Patch Tuesday. At the time, Jerry Bryant of the Microsoft Security Response Center said “we are not addressing the IIS/FTP vulnerability announced in Security Advisory 975191 with this month’s security bulletin release. Our teams are still working on an update for this issue and we encourage customers to review the advisory for the most current guidance on this issue.”

In addition to Windows, the October list of affected software includes Office, Silverlight, SQL Server, Forefront, and Developer Tools.

As customary, Microsoft will also release a new version of the Malicious Software Removal Tool.

Is anyone else tired of this? Last month, as with many others, we saw that the same flaws affected several generations of Windows operating systems, and those that affected Office, well, they affected Office 2003 and Office 2007, they probably would affect Office 2000, except that it fell off the ‘we’re still responsible for our mistakes’ list in July.

I suppose the only thing worse than this bad habit would be not getting the fixes, But it is very annoying to be told what can and can’t be done with software that we ‘rent’, yet the ‘landlord’ is having to perform monthly repairs, because he can’t seem to get the fixes right from the last visit.

If this was a real property, and we were indeed the tenants, I’m sure there would be a case for legal action. As it is, with the EULAs that have been allowed to stand, we have nothing to do but shut up and take it, or move to another neighborhood. (for someone else that is also tired of EULAs, check here)

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Quote of the day:

Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.

- Edgar Wilson Nye

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