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Today we released eight security bulletins addressing 23 CVE’s. Three bulletins have a maximum severity rating of Critical while the other five have a maximum severity rating of Important. We hope that the table below helps you prioritize the deployment of the updates appropriately for your environment. Bulletin Most likely attack vector Max Bulletin Severity Max Exploit-ability Index Likely first 30 days impact Platform mitigations and key notes MS13-059(Internet Explorer) Victim browses to a malicious webpage.

You might remember that in June 2013 we released Security Advisory 2854544 announcing additional options for enterprise customers to manage their digital certificate handling configuration on the Windows platform. The particular functionality announced in Security Advisory 2854544 was first built into Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, and Windows RT and then back-ported to other operating systems.

Today we released MS13-063 which includes a defense in depth change to address an exploitation technique that could be used to bypass two important platform mitigations: Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) and Data Execution Prevention (DEP). As we’ve described in the past, these mitigations play an important role in making it more difficult and costly for attackers to exploit vulnerabilities.

Today we’re providing advance notification for the release of eight bulletins, three Critical and five Important, for August 2013. The Critical updates address vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer and Exchange. As usual, we’ve scheduled the bulletin release for the second Tuesday of the month, August 13, 2013, at approximately 10:00 a.

C++ supports developers in object-orientated programming and removes from the developer the responsibility of dealing with many object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm problems. But these problems do not magically disappear. Rather it is the compiler that aims to provide a solution to many of the complexities that arise from C++ objects, virtual methods, inheritance etc.

Today we are kicking off a new challenge so you can showcase your security prowess and, if we can, help you build some more. Our BlueHat Challenge is a series of computer security questions, which increase in difficulty as you progress. Only the rare and talented engineer will be able to finish the Challenge on the first attempt.

August 2014 Update: The BlueHat Challenge is on hold. We will make an announcement on this blog when we re-start the BlueHat Challenge. Thanks for your interest! —- We were inspired by the Matasano Crypto Challenges. So we built a similar series of fun challenges to exercise reverse engineering, vulnerability discovery, and web browser manipulation attack concepts.

Over the years, our customers have come to expect a certain regularity and transparency in both our security updates and the guidance that goes with them. One regular piece of communication about our work is a yearly progress report, which provides a look into the program updates and bulletin statistics from the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC).

With about one week to go before we all gather at Black Hat in Las Vegas, we’re getting inquiries about precisely how the promised Live Mitigation Bypass Bounty judging at Black Hat will work. For most of the world, it works best when you get a good spot at the Microsoft booth (#301) around noon each day, so you can clearly see the excitement as some of security’s best and brightest look to pop built-in Windows 8.

We’re three weeks into our new world of bounties for Microsoft products now, and as the clock ticks down on one program, we’re prepping for some live excitement with one of the others. First, the Internet Explorer 11 Preview Bounty is entering its final 10 days; the bounty period for that program closes on the 26th of July.