Microsoft Issues Security Updates

Microsoft Corp. released security updates on Tuesday to fix the vulnerabilities in its software products. The company warned that the security software flaws could be very easily oppressed by an attacker to run unauthorized software on a victim's PC. The recently released Vista is said to be unaffected by any of the Operating System flaws.

After five years of development and a number of delays which were justified to improve security, Windows Vista was made available to consumers in January and Microsoft claims that Vista is the most secure Windows program ever.

The fixes were released as part of Microsoft’s monthly security bulletin. The Company labeled six alerts as ‘critical’ which is it's most serious rating and is used when the susceptibility could allow a detrimental Internet worm to replicate without the user doing anything to the machine. The critical vulnerabilities are said to affect Windows, Internet Explorer, Office and Microsoft Malware Protection Engine products.

However, a Microsoft spokesman said, “Because Windows Defender is a component of Windows Vista, Windows Vista is vulnerable.”

20 bugs were fixed in all by the updates which included the highly anticipated fix for six bugs in Microsoft's word processing software. Office, in particular, has been a favorite target of attackers of late.

The flaws with a lower threat level were rated as ‘important’. A backlog of security breaches that had been publicly disclosed but not fixed earlier was also cleared by Microsoft this time.

Most of the flaws are said to be potentially harmful only if people with vulnerable PCs visit a resentful website or open an infected document. For instance, the Microsoft security tools could be compromised when a rigged PDF file is scanned, according to the company's advisory.

Microsoft has been constantly working to improve the security standards of its softwares as they increasingly become prone to attacks. The latest patches can be downloaded at www.microsoft.com/security.