msrc-blog

It is often said that attackers have an advantage, because the defenders have to protect every part of their systems all the time, while the attacker only has to find one way in. This argument oversimplifies the security landscape and the real strength that defenders can achieve if they work together.

Today we released Security Advisory 2953095 to notify customers of a vulnerability in Microsoft Word. At this time, we are aware of limited, targeted attacks directed at Microsoft Word 2010. An attacker could cause remote code execution if someone was convinced to open a specially crafted Rich Text Format (RTF) file or a specially crafted mail in Microsoft Outlook while using Microsoft Word as the email viewer.

Today, Microsoft released Security Advisory 2953095 to notify customers of a vulnerability in Microsoft Word. At this time, we are aware of limited, targeted attacks directed at Microsoft Word 2010. This blog will discuss mitigations and temporary defensive strategies that will help customers to protect themselves while we are working on a security update.

Today we published the March 2014 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. We answered eight questions in total, with the majority focusing on the updates for Windows (MS14-016) and Internet Explorer (MS14-012). One question that was not answered on air has been included on the Q&A page. Here is the video replay.

We wrote several times in this blog about the importance of enabling Address Space Layout Randomization mitigation (ASLR) in modern software because it’s a very important defense mechanism that can increase the cost of writing exploits for attackers and in some cases prevent reliable exploitation. In today’s blog, we’ll go through ASLR one more time to show in practice how it can be valuable to mitigate two real exploits seen in the wild and to suggest solutions for programs not equipped with ASLR yet.

This month we release five bulletins to address 23 unique CVEs in Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer and Silverlight. If you need to prioritize, the update for Internet Explorer addresses the issue first described in Security Advisory 2934088, so it should be at the top of your list. While that update does warrant your attention, I want to also call out another impactful update.

Today we released five security bulletins addressing 23 unique CVE’s. Two bulletins have a maximum severity rating of Critical while the other three have a maximum severity rating of Important. We hope that the table below helps you prioritize the deployment of the updates appropriately for your environment. Bulletin Most likely attack vector Max Bulletin Severity Max Exploit-ability Likely first 30 days impact Platform mitigations and key notes MS14-012(Internet Explorer) Victim browses to a malicious webpage.

Today we provide advance notification for the release of five bulletins for March 2014, two rated Critical and thee rated Important in severity. These updates address issues in Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer and Silverlight. The update provided in MS14-012 fully addresses the issue first described in Security Advisory 2934088. While we have seen a limited number of attacks using this issue, they have only targeted Internet Explorer 10.

Today, we are thrilled to announce a preview release of the next version of the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit, better known as EMET. You can download EMET 5.0 Technical Preview here. This Technical Preview introduces new features and enhancements that we expect to be key components of the final EMET 5.

I’m here at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, California, attending the annual RSA Conference USA 2014. There’s a great crowd here and many valuable discussions. Our Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) engineering teams have been working hard on the next version of EMET, which helps customers increase the effort attackers must make to compromise a computer system.