Fergie's Tech Blog

Microsoft Patches 'Critical' Win2K Worm Hole

With regards to the patches that Microsoft issued earlier today, we have this article by Ryan Narain over on eWeek:

Microsoft Corp.'s October batch of security patches comes with a terse warning for Windows 2000 users: Pay special attention to MS05-051, a critical bulletin that covers a worm hole in the operating system.

The bulletin, which addresses four different Windows vulnerabilities, creates a "remote, unauthenticated attack vector" on Windows 2000 systems, triggering fears that a network worm attack might be inevitable.

"This is the same attack vector that led to the Zotob worm," said Stephen Toulouse, program manager at the Microsoft Security Response Center.

In an interview with Ziff Davis Internet News moments after Microsoft shipped the monthly security updates, Toulouse underlined the need for businesses to apply the MS05-051 bulletin as the highest possible priority.

"It's hard to predict what will happen, but this is one of those vulnerabilities that could be really dangerous, especially for customers running older versions of the operating system," Toulouse said.

"If you're running Windows 2000, you want to apply this update as fast as possible. The concern is that we could be looking at another Zotob, because the attack vector is the same," he added.

posted by Fergie @ 10/11/2005 06:26:00 PM