Hi all- Alexandra Huft here again! I thought you might find it interesting to see “behind the scenes” of how a security vulnerability eventually becomes a security bulletin. So, I’ll start way back at the beginning. We receive reports from many different finders on issues that may or may not be a vulnerability. The first thing that we do is work to determine that we are able to duplicate what the finder has reported. Sometimes this is very simple, other times we need to go back to the finder...

It's been 10 years since I did any hands-on dev work. However working in the security space at Microsoft, "SDL" or the Security Development Lifecycle is very visible and obviously important to even those not directly involved in development. We had the opportunity here in LA to share with customers how Microsoft took BillG's edict that security should be our top priority, and over the past couple of years re-engineer our entire development process to implement this vision at every level - from...

Hi all- my name is Alexandra Huft, I am a Security Program Manager within the Microsoft Security Response Center, and I’m new to the blog. This being my first PDC I’ve attended ,it has been amazing. It looks like a small swarm with all of dev’s that are attend ing this year. Last night we had the Microsoft reception which was seemed very much welcomed. We had lots of food and an abundance of drinks that would make anyone happy . J It was very interesting chatting with people about the MSRC. I...

Craig Gehre here reporting from the Professional Developer's Conference in L.A. and I have to say that PDC is really coo this year! If you like to code or anything related to developing with, or for, the latest technologies this is the place for you. I hit Bill Gates' keynote for a bit and then headed over to our MSRC booth to get situated. Thankfully they have these well placed tables with cheese Danishes here that are great with my ritual vente almond mocha. The MSRC is sharing a booth space...

Well it's Tuesday, and it been another busy day. That might be surprising since we didn’t release any new security updates, but there’s always a lot going on in the MSRC. While the decision to not ship the security update was a difficult one, it was encouraging to see that several customers, security researchers and even the press felt it was the right decision. We strive to release high-quality updates and do our best to avoid releasing a problematic update. So, while there is no security bulletin...

Hey folks, Mike Reavey again. So, we’ve had a little change in plans for next week and wanted to make you all aware of it. This afternoon we revised the information in the Advance Notification to reflect a change for next week’s release. Microsoft will not be issuing any new security updates on September 13 th as part of the September monthly bulletin release cycle. You can check out the revised information here . So, why did we do this? Let me explain. Late in the testing process, we encountered...

Hey folks, Mike Reavey here again – and while its been a pretty busy morning (the way I like it) I did want to take a quick second to make sure everyone saw the Advance Notification for the Security Bulletin release this September. This coming Tuesday, we’re planning to release one security bulletin, and its in Windows. The maximum severity rating for this is Critical , so please update systems as soon as possible. We don’t expect this update to cause a reboot and it can be deployed and detected...

This is Mike Reavey here. It’s been a little bit quieter around the MSRC for the last week, but I thought I’d take a second now to point out a few things that you might not know exist. First off, I need to give a big shout out to the fact that the individuals responsible for creating and releasing Zotob have been arrested. You can read the official Microsoft comment on it here . Now, here are my picks for some cool security information on Microsoft.com: Microsoft Security Developer Center...

Hi Folks, -- you may have noticed that we posted an advisory earlier this week: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/897663.mspx . This advisory discusses how a malformed registry key entry could allow an exception to be entered into the firewall, but this exception wouldn’t be visible in the standard firewall graphical user interfaces. In response to customer feedback and to clear up any confusion, we wanted to be explicit that in order for this type of action to happen a system would...