Nov. 2005 Security Updates

Nov. 2005’s “Patch Tuesday” included only one critical patch, which was for vulnerabilities in the Windows graphics rendering engine. Microsoft also issued an advisory and several Knowledge Base (KB) articles to help a small number of customers who had problems with earlier updates, and a security advisory for Macromedia Flash, which is included with some Windows versions.

One Patch, Two Advisories

The critical patch released in Nov. 2005 fixed vulnerabilities in the Windows graphics rendering engine, including a buffer overflow that could allow a remote attacker to take complete control of an affected system. The vulnerabilities are rated critical, because any program that renders either 16-bit Windows Metafile (WMF) or 32-bit Enhanced Metafile (EMF) images could potentially be exploited on an unpatched version of Windows. While the bulletin identifies three vulnerabilities, a single patch corrects all three.

After the release of MS05-051 (“Vulnerabilities in MSDTC and COM+ Could Allow Remote Code Execution”) in Oct. 2005, Microsoft issued a Security Advisory to aid customers who had problems applying the update. Customers who changed the default Access Control List (ACL) for certain Windows directories experienced problems deploying the patch. KB article 909444 explains to those customers how to correct the problem. Microsoft also issued two other KB articles in Oct. 2005 (without Security Advisories) to help customers who had problems with the MS05-052 patch (“Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer”), which was also issued in October. The KB articles (909889 and 896738) address problems with custom ActiveX controls not loading as expected in Internet Explorer (IE) or from a Web page.