In the company’s rating system “critical” means the patched vulnerabilities may be exploited remotely, without user’s intervention.
According to its prepatch notification note, Microsoft plans to fix some critical vulnerabilities in Bluetooth, DirectX and IE in Windows. As usual, the company didn’t release any specific details about the vulnerabilities, in order to prevent hackers from taking advantage of them.
Both the DirectX and IE updates address flaws that affect Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 and 2008. Meanwhile, the Bluetooth bulletin affects Windows XP and Vista.
Other three fixes are also slated for Active Directory, the Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) and the Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) protocol, used by Windows to stream media to many recipients. These updates are all rated “important”
If exploited, the flaws in both PGM and Active Directory could lead to a denial of service attack, the company said.
The seventh bulletin, called “Kill Bit” and rated as “moderate” address Windows 2000, Windows XP, Vista, Windows Server 2003 and 2008. This type of patch will disable code that is known to have a security bug. The error could enable a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code.