November 2010 Security Bulletin Release

Hello all. As part of our usual cycle of monthly updates, today Microsoft is releasing three security bulletins, addressing 11 vulnerabilities. One of the bulletins has a Critical severity rating, while the other two are rated Important. Recapping the trio:

• MS10-087 This bulletin resolves five issues affecting all currently supported Microsoft Office products. The bulletin is rated Critical for Office 2007 and Office 2010 due to a preview pane vector in Outlook that could trigger the vulnerability when a customer views a specially crafted malicious RTF (Rich Text Format) file. The update also addresses an Office vector for the vulnerability described in Security Advisory 2269637, which has been referred to as "DLL Preloading" and "Binary planting." MS10-087 is Microsoft's top priority bulletin for deployment in November and has an Exploitability Index rating of 1.

• MS10-088 This bulletin resolves two cooperatively disclosed vulnerabilities in Microsoft PowerPoint that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted PowerPoint file. The overall severity rating is Important due to the user interaction required to open the malicious file and we give the bulletin a rating of 2 in our deployment priority assessment.

• MS10-089 This bulletin resolves four cooperatively disclosed vulnerabilities in Unified Access Gateway (UAG), which is a component of Microsoft Forefront. The most significant of these could allow elevation of privilege if a user clicks on a malicious link on a website. This update is offered through the Microsoft Download Center and is not available through Microsoft Update at this time. With an overall severity rating of Important and user interaction required to exploit, we also give this a deployment priority of 2.

We are not aware of any active attacks seeking to exploit the vulnerabilities addressed in this month's release. Please see the video below for additional information on the November bulletins:

As always, we recommend that customers deploy all security updates as soon as possible. To further assist customers in their deployment planning, here is an aggregate view of risk and impact and our deployment priority guidance (click for larger view):

Our Security Research & Defense (SRD) team takes a closer look at some of the issues raised by this month's round of bulletins today on its blog.

More information about the security updates can be found on the Microsoft Security Bulletin summary web page.  Our Exploitability Index provides additional information to help customers prioritize deployment of the monthly security bulletins.

Please join the monthly technical webcast to learn more about the November 2010 security bulletin release. The webcast is scheduled for Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. PST (UTC -8). Registration is available here.

Remember, you can follow the MSRC team for late breaking news and updates on the threat landscape on Twitter at @MSFTSecResponse.

Thanks,

Jerry Bryant
Group Manager, Response Communications