Microsoft Slates 8 Bug Updates For Year’s Final Patch Release.

Microsoft Corp. will deliver eight security updates next week, six of them marked “critical,” to plug holes in Windows, Internet Explorer, Office and other products.

Two of the eight updates will patch Windows, another two are aimed at Office, while the remaining four target Internet Explorer (IE), SharePoint, Windows Media Player, and Visual Basic and Visual Studio, Microsoft said today in its monthly advance warning of what to expect next Tuesday.

One of the two updates slated for Windows may be a fix, finally, for an eight-month-old vulnerability that Microsoft first acknowledged in April, and which has been exploited by hackers since mid-October, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security Inc.

“The bulletin Microsoft marked ‘Windows 1′ looks like the issue in the 951306 advisory,” said Storms, referring to the April warning of a rights elevation bug in all versions of Windows. Several weeks before that, Cesar Cerrudo, a researcher and security consultant, said he would disclose a Windows flaw at an upcoming conference; at the time, Microsoft had downplayed the issue, dubbing the problem a “design flaw,” not a security bug.

In mid-October, however, Microsoft confirmed that hackers were actively exploiting the unpatched bug.

Overall, said Storms, the patch list for next week looks like a “sampler plate, a smorgasbord if you will, a little of everything.”

Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer at Qualys Inc., agreed. “It looks pretty normal and has the usual suspects,” he said, ticking off the bulletins aimed at Office, IE and Windows Media Player, all which have been patched several times this year.

Both Storms and Kandek, however, noted significance of the other Windows update. Dubbed “Windows 2″ by Microsoft, it will patch newer versions of the operating system — Vista and Server 2008 — but is not applicable to older editions, such as Windows 2000, XP or Server 2003.

Typically, it’s the other way around, said Kandek. “Vista and Server 2008 were developed in a different way, with the Security Development Lifecycle (or SDL) process, and there was much more scrutiny on the code.”

“The bug must be in code [in Vista and Server 2008] from the older versions that was rewritten from scratch, or in something new,” said Storms.

Kandek echoed that thought. “We know Vista uses lots of components and code from the older operating systems, but Microsoft also added new services,” he said. “This seems to be a vulnerability in a new service.”

Of the other bulletins, Kandek pointed to the SharePoint patch as perhaps the most interesting. “We don’t see that very often, and it could be interesting because it’s on the server side.”

Storms, meanwhile, pointed out that the two updates for Office — which will patch Word and Excel — are probably fixes for file format bugs since both apply to not only the Windows versions of those applications, but also the corresponding editions for the Mac.

If Microsoft issues all eight bulletins — at times it has dropped one at the last minute — it will have released 77 for the year, up from 2007’s total of 69 and close to 2006’s 78, but far below 2000’s record of 100 updates.

Microsoft will release the December security updates at approximately 1 p.m. EST on Tuesday.

Microsoft Slaps Vista SP2 Beta On Windows Update.

As expected, Microsoft Corp. launched the first public beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) late yesterday, making it available for download from both its Web site and through its update mechanism.

On Tuesday, Microsoft seeded the update to subscribers of its TechNet and Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) services, and announced it would open the beta on Thursday to anyone interested in trying the preview release.

Vista SP2 is now available in five language-specific editions: English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish. According to a Microsoft spokeswoman, the company won’t be issuing the beta in any other languages; instead, 31 additional versions will be available only when SP2 reaches “release to manufacturing,” or RTM, status.

Microsoft has not committed to Vista SP2 delivery or RTM dates, but a Web site that has a solid track record of predicting such things said the update would hit RTM in April 2009.

Vista SP2 can be downloaded as a 388MB stand-alone installer for 32-bit versions or as a 614MB download for 64-bit. A 1.2GB .iso disk image is also available from Microsoft’s Web site.

Users can also retrieve and install SP2 through Windows Update, Microsoft’s default update service.

But users must jump through some hoops before they can grab Vista SP2 from Windows Update, Microsoft warned in a document that spells out the process. First, they must download and save a short command script, then rename and run it with administrator privileges. The script, said Microsoft, will “set a registry key on your computer that will enable Windows Update to offer you the Service Pack.”

With that hack out of the way, users must next download and install a pre-SP2 “Servicing Stack” update that lets Vista’s installer handle the service pack. Another refresh of Windows Update should offer up Vista SP2, which can then be downloaded and installed. The latter may take as long as an hour, Microsoft notes in an on-screen message;

As is its usual practice, Microsoft set a time limit on the beta of Vista SP2, although it gave conflicting dates. In the instructions that walk users through the Windows Update process, it said the beta “will not longer operate after May 1, 2010, and should be uninstalled prior to that date.” The end-user licensing agreement that pops up just prior to the actual installation, however, listed June 1, 2010, as the cut-off.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a call for clarification on the beta’s retirement date.

More information about the Vista SP2 beta, including links to downloads, release notes and the only available support option — online forums — can be found on Microsoft’s TechNet and MSDN sites.

Vista SP2 contains all the hot fixes and security patches Microsoft issued from the time it wrapped up SP1 through October 2008, as well as a number of feature additions and improvements, including better power management, Windows Search 4 and Blu-ray data recording.