Privacy, Security & Virus Information

Seventeen Year Old Security Bug Discovered in Windows

A bug that has lain undiscovered in Windows operating systems since its very early days was finally eradicated in the recent Microsoft Patch Tuesay.

The bug goes back to the days when DOS operating system was much closer to the surface in Windows NT 3.1, and, unbelievable though it may seem, has been carried forward to this day in every updated version of Microsoft's market leading operating system. As well as the oldest bug in history, which saw the light of day well before computer viruses and malware was ever dreamed about, a further 25 chinks in will be "patched over" with information that at least five of the bugs are "critical".

However the most veteran of all Microsoft's bugs is very lightweight and the security researcher from Google who unearthed the flaw in January of this year did notice that it allows newer versions of Windows still to run programs that date back from the DOS era.

Google's researcher quickly found a way to exploit this utility in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7, and it would only have been a matter of time before hackers would have also come across the same potential security flaw, if it had continued to remain "un-patched".

As well as the ancient bug, at least five of the bugs in Windows that are too patched were serious enough to allow hackers to carry out various actions that could effectively lead to the hijack of a Windows PC and upload some fairly damaging viruses to it. The current Patch Tuesday will also deal with bugs discovered in most versions of Windows as well as Office XP, Office 2003 and even the Office 2004 version for Apple Macintosh machines.

Meanwhile this update is far away from being the largest that Microsoft has ever released, with the security update for October 2009 taking the prize. That particular patch tackled a total of 34 vulnerabilities, with eight of them being rated at the highest level of critical.

Last month, Microsoft also broke a few precedents by releasing an "out of band" patch to cope with a serious vulnerability in Internet Explorer that was being vigorously exploited online, with the most prominent infringement being used to attack Google in China.

Following the attack on Google, many other cyber criminals started seeking ways to exploit the loophole. Further security research has brought about the discovery of Internet Explorer's vulnerability to an attack that will allow hackers to view the files held on a victim's machine.

The issue of security online is coming increasingly to the fore, and computers are vulnerable to attack from every quarter. The means to protect a computer and the valuable information that it contains can only be done through installing the most powerful and readily updatable virus protection programs available.

 

< Back