Microsoft Fixes Seven Important System Glitches

Microsoft released on Tuesday a security update for Windows designed to fix a total of seven system glitches that could have permitted hackers to access computers and unload several malicious codes.

Out of the seven vulnerabilities, three were considered critical, another three were rated important and one was labeled moderate.

The three vulnerabilities considered critical were related to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, DirectX and Bluetooth and the update took care of the menace for most of Windows’ versions, including Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and 2008, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

According to several security experts the biggest threat out of the three comes from the Bluetooth flaw, as a remote attacker only needs to actively engage the technology in order to have a clear access to the network. Apparently, once the activation of the Bluetooth feature is complete, anyone with the proper know-how could hack into the system and take over the unsuspecting owner’s computer.

Besides the update, Microsoft also released three informational bulletins, labeled as important, which bring to the users’ attention a series of additional errors for PGM, Active Directory and WINS also affecting a large number of versions of Windows. Apparently, the errors for PGM and Active Directory could allow a denial-of-service attack and the security flaw in WINS could offer attackers access to several privileges without authorization.

Unfortunately, the company did not include in the security upgrade pack a solution for last month’s discovered "carpet bomb" error in Apple Safari, also labeled as critical.

Even though, so far, the vulnerabilities have not been exploited, Microsoft and several security experts highly recommend the rapid installation of the update.

As I see it, the security updating is truly mandatory as surely there will be more than a few users getting several ideas for practical jokes or worse after reading the articles posted on the present issue.