Microsoft Advance Notification for March 2014

The Microsoft Security release for March will include patches for Windows, Internet Explorer and Silverlight. There will be a total of five bulletins with two rated "Critical" and three rated "Important". Four of the bulletins affect Windows two of which are rated "Critical". The security update for Internet Explorer affects versions 6 though 11 and will require a restart. There are two other Windows bulletins that will also require a restart.

If you're on Windows XP, this will likely be your last security update since Microsoft is dropping support for this legacy operating system on April 8th. Microsoft will soon be pushing pop-ups to Windows XP to alert users to upgrade immediately.

Last month, an Internet Explorer 0-day vulnerability known as CVE-2014-0322 was exploited in the wild and targeting IE 10 installations. You can read more about it here. Microsoft has provided an automated Fixit solution known as the "MSHTML Shim Workaround" to mitigate this vulnerability. It is yet to be determined if Microsoft will include a patch for this vulnerability in this release. Let's all keep our fingers crossed!!!

Since there is a single "Important" bulletin for Silverlight 5, keep a lookout for suspicious websites requiring users to install or enable this plugin. Mac OSX users are not off the hook from this bulletin. Microsoft will be providing an update for Silverlight 5 for both Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX platforms. Trustwave SpiderLabs is not aware of any new Silverlight vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild. However, it's always the best practice to only visit trusted websites.

For a complete run-down of the March Microsoft security bulletins, please come back on March 11th. We hope to see you back soon!