Tuesday, February 12, 2008 6:28 PM
cmosby
February Black Tuesday Overview - UPDATE 2 - SANS Internet Storm Center
Overview of the February 2008 Microsoft patches and their status.
We will update issues on this page as they evolve.
We appreciate updates
US based customers can call Microsoft for free patch related support on 1-866-PCSAFETY
(*): ISC rating
- We use 4 levels:
- PATCH NOW:
Typically used where we see immediate danger of exploitation. Typical
environments will want to deploy these patches ASAP. Workarounds are
typically not accepted by users or are not possible. This rating is
often used when typical deployments make it vulnerable and exploits are
being used or easy to obtain or make.
- Critical:
Anything that needs little to become "interesting" for the dark side.
Best approach is to test and deploy ASAP. Workarounds can give more
time to test.
- Important: Things where more testing and other measures can help.
- Less Urgent: Typically we expect the impact if left unpatched to be not that big a deal in the short term. Do not forget them however.
- The
difference between the client and server rating is based on how you use
the affected machine. We take into account the typical client and
server deployment in the usage of the machine and the common measures
people typically have in place already. Measures we presume are simple
best practices for servers such as not using outlook, MSIE, word etc.
to do traditional office or leisure work.
- The rating is
not a risk analysis as such. It is a rating of importance of the
vulnerability and the perceived or even predicted threat for affected
systems. The rating does not account for the number of affected systems
there are. It is for an affected system in a typical worst-case role.
- Only
the organization itself is in a position to do a full risk analysis
involving the presence (or lack of) affected systems, the actually
implemented measures, the impact on their operation and the value of
the assets involved.
- All patches released by a vendor are
important enough to have a close look if you use the affected systems.
There is little incentive for vendors to publicize patches that do not
have some form of risk to them.
(**): Mainly due to shared webservers being very affected by this
(***): Mainly due to classic ASP being used on many web servers like shared hosting providers
Filed under: SMS, Patch Management, Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, Security, ConfigMgr