For providers

There are those I’ve met who think my life is something akin to the classic comedy Groundhog Day. No, I don’t wake up to the musical stylings of Sonny and Cher each morning, but month after month after month, the second Tuesday rolls around and I’m involved in releasing security updates.

Today we’re providing advance notification for the release of seven bulletins, six Critical and one Important, for July 2013. The Critical bulletins address vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, .NET Framework, Silverlight, Internet Explorer and GDI+. Also scheduled for inclusion among these Critical bulletins is an update to address CVE-2013-3660, which is a publicly known issue in the Kernel-Mode Drivers component of Windows.

Over the years, we’ve put a lot of work into helping secure the computing ecosystem and limiting the number of issues in our products. The security researcher community is critical to these efforts, as they help us find vulnerabilities in our software that we may have missed. Now we’re taking it even further.

Today we’re publishing the June 2013 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. We fielded three questions during the webcast, with specific questions focusing primarily on Windows Print Spooler (MS13-050), Microsoft Office (MS13-051), and the security advisory addressing digital certificates (SA2854544). There was one question we were unable to field on the air which we answered on the Q&A page.

It was just over one year ago, May 28, 2012, to be exact, that I transitioned from running active MSRC cases and writing bulletins to my current role managing software security incidents. A lot has changed in that year*- _and I’ve dealt with some interesting issues during my tenure* - _but our goal of providing the best customer protections possible remains a constant.

Today we’re providing Advance Notification of five bulletins for release on Tuesday, June 11, 2013. This release brings one Critical- and four Important-class bulletins. The Critical-rated bulletin addresses issues in Internet Explorer, and the Important-rated bulletins address issues in Microsoft Windows and Office. We will publish the bulletins on the second Tuesday of the month, at approximately 10 a.

For those who couldn’t attend the live webcast, today we’re publishing the May 2013 Security Bulletin Webcast Questions & Answers page. We fielded 13 questions on various topics during the webcast, with specific bulletin questions focusing primarily on Internet Explorer (MS13-037 and MS13-038) and Visio (MS13-044). We invite our customers to join us for the next public webcast on Wednesday, June 12, 2013, at 11 a.

Today, we are releasing 10 bulletins, addressing 33 vulnerabilities in Microsoft products. Before we get into the details, we wanted to first let our enterprise customers know about a change in how we’re communicating technical details within our security advisories. Starting today, customers will be able to clearly identify key security updates within advisories.

Today we’re providing Advance Notification of 10 bulletins for release on Tuesday, May 14, 2013. This release brings two Critical and eight Important-class bulletins, which address 33 unique vulnerabilities. The Critical-rated bulletins address issues in Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. Of note, we are working to have the Internet Explorer Security Update address the issue described in Security Advisory 2847140, supplementing the currently available Fix it.

We have updated Security Advisory 2847140 to include an easy, one-click Fix it to address the known attack vectors. The Fix it is available to all customers and helps prevent known attacks that leverage the vulnerability to execute code and should not affect your ability to browse the Web. Additionally, applying the Fix it does not require a reboot.