THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA"

For those of you who may not be aware, I do the Patch Watch section of the Windows Secrets newsletter [in the paid version] and Brian Livingston has a very unique way of doing the 'paid' version.  It's whatever you want to pay.  Now that's a “Pay it forward” concept if I ever heard one, isn't it? 

So in reviewing the patches and the action on the patch management community, there are two in particular that we in SBSland need to really watch out for because they are the HARDEST to patch for.

• Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Word May Lead to Remote Code Execution (890169)
  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/ms05-023.mspx

That one is a concern because if you don't have a tool like Shavlik, you won't necessarily get the patch.  WSUS is still in beta and you have to manually go to Office Update.  A icky word document [and how could we get this?  what else via email] can nail a desktop.  Hopefully the A/V writers will have something to help soon.

Next is the one that SBS 2000 boxes running with SMTP mail [you know you've set it up with MX records and all that] really really need to be aware of:

• Vulnerability in Exchange Server Could Allow Remote Code Execution (894549)
  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/ms05-021.mspx

Someone banging on our port 25 with some bad crafted 'gunk' could nail our boxes.  Exchange 2003 doesn't have this same issue...it can only be attacked from another Exchange box [which ..obviously we don't have here], but 2000 boxes are a concern.  And as of right now, again we don't have a patch tool that will scan for this. 

I cannot stress ENOUGH that Windows Updates is NOT enough to patch our boxes.  You must manually install that Exchange patch on your Small Business Server systems.

Test the patch on your test systems, and if you don't have a test system, hang off for a few days, we'll tell you want we seen in the community.  Don't forget on April 20th I'll be doing a patch webcast and will specifically talk about what I look for in bulletins to evaluate risk and deployment issues and will use these April bulletins as examples.  See you then!