(OT) Windows security Heads up: MS08-067

[Bill Campbell]

I just got the attached security notice from a very reliable
source, and it seems to be critical enough that those of the
FilePro crowd who have to endure Windows should know about it.

This is forwarded with the permission of the author.

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
Voice:          (206) 236-1676  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
Fax:            (206) 232-9186

Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity --
    Dennis Ritchie
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For those of you responsible for/involved with large windows
environments, take note of and apply "out of band" MS08-067 ASAP.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-067.mspx

Note the "apply the update immediately".

All windows releases since Win2000 are vulnerable, tho with Vista, it's
merely rated "Important" instead of "Critical".

Indications (which I'm not able to disclose) are that Microsoft is
seemingly more worried about this one than just about anything they've
had before.

It is a network-level vulnerability.  Which means it takes just one
infection to lose every vulnerable machine in your network, and possibly
everything else too.  IOW: a "SQL Slammer"-level event.

[Eg: despite us being relatively immune to SQL Slammer (only a dozen or
so outright infections, because hardly anybody here ever installed M$
SQL), the storm it raised blew up several of our subnets, and took out
several firewalls and other services.  None of that has anything to do
with windows.]

Patches here ordinarily take about 48-72 hours to pass QA, and are applied
through SMS (we're administratively prohibited from using Microsoft's
online patching). QA on this one broke all speed records - we were
rolling in in less than 8 hours.  A couple of my colleagues are exhausted...

The patch references MS06-040.  That vulnerability, if I'm not mistaken,
led to a number of bot infections.