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Covering another patch Tuesday for Microsoft, I was thinking that instead of naming their new operating system Vista, they should have named it Cabbage, and then I could call today Cabbage Patch Tuesday.

According to Microsoft, today they issued fixes for 11 holes in different versions of Windows operating systems along with other products. These updates include a fix for 2 vulnerabilities in Windows Media Player, which hackers could use to install software just be getting users to open a modified Windows Media Players file.

Another update fixes four security problems in Internet Explorer in which hackers could break into or steal data from vulnerable PCs by either getting the user to visit a specific internet site or opening a specific email. This patch does not apply to IE 7. And while there were a few rumblings about IE 7 vulnerabilities this past month, Microsoft is still investigating them for potential future patches.

Also, today’s bundle includes a patch for a dangerous vulnerability in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 that attackers are already using to infect vulnerable machines. Visual Studio is not a default program (as in if you had in installed on your system, you would know it).

Finally, according to Brian Kerbs Security Fix, none of the updates include a fix for a Microsoft Word vulnerability currently being exploited. Microsoft said they were aware of the serious hole in basically every version of Word, and even warned about a second one, but yet this is the second month in a row that Microsoft has not issued an Office patch. Hopefully Microsoft will rectify these problems next year, and until then, always beware of opening attachments and stay off the back-alleys of the internet.

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