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Today we released eleven security bulletins addressing 24 CVE’s. Five bulletins have a maximum severity rating of Critical while the other six 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 XI Likely first 30 days impact Platform mitigations and key notes MS13-096(GDI+ TIFF parsing) Victim opens malicious Office document.

There are times when we get too close to a topic. We familiarize ourselves with every aspect and nuance, but fail to recognize not everyone else has done the same. Whether you consider this myopia, navel-gazing, or human nature, the effect is the same. I recognized this during the recent webcast when someone asked the question – “What’s the difference between a security advisory and a security bulletin?

Today we released MS13-098, a security update that strengthens the Authenticode code-signing technology against attempts to modify a signed binary without invalidating the signature. This update addresses a specific instance of malicious binary modification that could allow a modified binary to pass the Authenticode signature check. More importantly, it also introduces further hardening to consider a binary “unsigned” if any modification has been made in a certain portion of the binary.

Today we released MS13-106 which resolves a security feature bypass that can allow attackers to circumvent Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) using a specific DLL library (HXDS.DLL) provided as part of Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010. The existence of an ASLR bypass does not directly enable the execution of code and does not represent a risk by itself, since

Microsoft is updating the Certificate Trust List (CTL) for all supported releases of Microsoft Windows to remove the trust of a mis-issued third-party digital certificate, which could be used to spoof content and perform phishing or man-in-the-middle attacks against web properties. With this action, customers will be automatically be protected against this issue.

This week, starting Thursday, we’ll be hosting our 13th edition of BlueHat. I’m always so impressed with the level of knowledge we attract to each BlueHat, and while the event is invite-only, we’ll be sharing glimpses into the event via this blog and the hashtag #BlueHat. For each of the past six years I have had the honor to work among some of the most talented engineers I have ever met, here at Microsoft.

Today we’re providing advance notification for the release of 11 bulletins, five Critical and six Important, for December 2013. The Critical updates address vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Windows, Microsoft Exchange and GDI+. The Critical update for GDI+ fully addresses the publicly disclosed issue described in Security Advisory 2896666. This release won’t include an update for the issue described in Security Advisory 2914486.

Today we released Security Advisory 2914486 regarding a local elevation of privilege (EoP) issue that affects customers using Microsoft Windows XP and Server 2003. Windows Vista and later are not affected by this local EoP issue. A member of the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) found this issue being used on systems compromised by a third-party remote code execution vulnerability.

As the proliferation of devices continues to capture the imagination of consumers, and has ignited what is referred to as bring your own device (BYOD) revolution, many IT departments across the globe are now facing increased security considerations. While organizations encourage BYOD for cost savings and productivity, it is also important to have robust security policies supporting BYOD.

Today we’re publishing the November 2013 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. The majority of questions focused on the ActiveX Kill Bits bulletin (MS13-090) and the advisories. We also answered a few general questions that were not specific to any of this month’s updates, but that may be of interest.