Your Daily Computer Security Tips

It’s Patch Tuesday once again, folks. Time to update your Windows and other Microsoft software. Today, the company has a bumper crop of fixes for you. There are up to 19 updates for your PC, fixing 34 or more flaws, including some critical fixes and zero-day vulnerabilities.

These are new weaknesses for which no repairs yet exist.

Hackers are busily exploiting at least one of these flaws, so you should update immediately. Attack code for other vulnerabilities is readily available on the Web. The patches also fix holes in Microsoft Office and Works.

It might be a good idea to make a Restore Point first, and even back up your important data, which you should be doing anyway, right? Then run Windows or Microsoft Update.

Note: If you do not want Internet Explorer 8 at this time, be sure to uncheck the box.

A Firefox security and stability update is available, bringing us to version 3.5.3 of the browser. The new version will check for outdated versions of Adobe’s Flash Player on your computer. Flash is a frequent target of hackers.

So after you install the browser update, Firefox may prompt you to update Flash. The most recent version is 10.0.32.18. Just follow the steps, but be sure to uncheck the boxes for any stuff you do not want.

This week Microsoft released a bunch of patches and fixes for Windows. Go to the Microsoft or Windows Update site, and see what is waiting there for you. Or check that your computer downloaded and installed the updates automatically.

These updates sometimes cause problems. If you like, you can back up your important data and files first, and/or make a Restore Point.

Adobe has repaired 12 bugs in Flash Player. At least one has been exploited for a week now, by the hackers. The flaws could allow a crook to hijack your PC and run his own malicious code on it. Windows, Macs and Linux are affected.

Three of the bugs were really Microsoft’s fault. Adobe’s programmers used a faulty Microsoft code library to build their software. Fixes for Reader and Acrobat should also be available by now.

Go to the Adobe Web site here http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ or here http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/491/cpsid_49166.html to get started updating your programs, or launch the programs and use their update functions.

The next regularly scheduled software update from Microsoft is August 11. However, the Company is taking the unusual step of releasing two emergency patches now. One fixes a critical flaw in Internet Explorer. The other, rated “moderate”, repairs a vulnerability in Visual Studio, which is a program used to develop forms, Web sites, applications and graphical user interfaces.

It is not entirely clear what is being repaired. But when Microsoft releases an emergency patch like this, it usually means the vulnerability is being exploited by the hackers. Microsoft claims that is not the case this time.

The flaw seems to be related to that ActiveX bug that was identified earlier this month. Microsoft issued a kill-bit, which allows users to disable the ActiveX control, or mini-program. However, this did not fix the underlying problem. So new attacks are possible on your computer unless you install the latest patch.

Security experts claim that there are thousands of malicious Web sites that use this ActiveX bug to launch attacks against other computers. Microsoft was told about this particular bug over a year ago. Anyway, go to the Microsoft Update site now, and get the fix.