Viral Wednesday

[FreewheelinFrank]

Industry comment Back in the mists of the past, people gave names to the days of the week. Some of these have survived in the names of our modern weekdays. Monday is Moon Day, Thursday is named after the Norse storm god Thor and the roman god Saturn is remembered every Saturday.

We think this is a great idea and should be revived. People must agree with this as they have already started with the first name: today is Patch Tuesday. Looking through the past year or so we can see that there are some names for the other days of this week almost which are almost choosing themselves.
Worrying Monday

The day before patch Tuesday when all an administrator has is a worrying snippet of information about the patches that are soon to be released. Will they have to scramble to close a vulnerability in their enterprise? They have to wait and see.
Patch Tuesday

We think enough has been said about this one.
Viral Wednesday

With 24 hours gone since the release of the patches and details of the vulnerabilities being fix out in the open, Malware writers have a field day. New exploits and Trojans pour onto the internet hoping to catch people before they can close any of the holes that weren’t already being used to attack systems.
Vulnerable Thursday

Now the excitement of Patch Tuesday is past, those niggling little vulnerabilities that researchers have been sitting on can be publicly disclosed, safe in the knowledge that there is a month for any exploitation to do damage before the next round of patches.
Rollback Friday

The first administrators and users to patch their systems will now be discovering which patch is the dud this month. Maybe it was the patch documentation that wasn’t quite complete or perhaps a bug in the patch itself. Either way, a patch to fix one vulnerability has stopped something unrelated from working, or worse still, it has opened a wholly new vulnerability. ®

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/11/days_of_the_week/

Any Viral Wednesday stories yet?

[CharleyO]

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None from me, thankfully.   


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[RejZoR]

It's calm as usual on my end...

[FreewheelinFrank]

Today, less than 48 hours after Microsoft released a record number of security updates, comes the release of exploit code for yet another Office flaw, this one apparently targeted at PowerPoint files in Office 2003.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/10/patch_tuesday_exploit_thursday.html

[DavidR]

And there is me still waiting for MS to grace me with a slot to download of the updates I selected for download a day and a half ago

Good job I don't rely on them for total protection.

[.: Mac :.]

David, I just turned on My PC an hour ago and it started downloading the updates instantly 

[CharleyO]

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Hi David,

I did the downloads by clicking on Windows Update and downloaded what I wanted/needed in less than 30 mins. I am also on dial-up ... but in the USA so that may make a difference. Does MS have a download site in the UK?


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[DavidR]

Everyone fights for a piece of the same download pie, the autoupdate function doesn't allow for server selection as to where the download comes from.

I have been on-line many times since my selection of updates to download and the usual thing that happens is the update shield comes up to say it is downloading the updates you selected. That happened once for a few seconds and promptly disappeared, so no auto download selection download.

I'm trying to allow the autoupdate function do its work, I have mine set to check and notify me but not automatically download. I select the ones for download and install and it is supposed to trot off and download those I selected. I had the same trouble last patch Tuesday where it took three days to eventually get the updates.

A visit to window update says you need to download the latest upgrade, to supposedly improve updates, no mention of WGA if you OK this, the first thing it tries to do is install KB892130 the WGA patch which I have been avoiding.